Cupid's Conspiracy

Twenty-one years ago, I stopped believing in love. It was frayed, stained, broken. It was indentations from a razor blade. I lost the instinct of love. It was unrequited. It was a mirage, out of reach, distant. It was morbid self-pity isolation. It was temperamental and imitable. It was simply an indulgence. It was changing fashion. It was exploitative. I thought the word "love" was like a curse word. Or simply an unstillable curse. I thought that "I love you" was an impromptu something you said when there was nothing else on the tip of your tongue.

I imagined circumstances when one would be required to say it. Driving down the road w/ a broken radio. On a date, knocking back an aperitif, before the meal. The intermission of a Chekov play. On the balcony at a party that you want to escape. At the zoo where you adore a mischievous panda bear. While compromising over dessert. In a museum when you can't describe Vermeer's light adequately enough. When bicycling thru a maze of windmills and tulips. At a concert w/ spiraling nuances of pot in the air. When perusing a book of poetry because it inspires affection. On a dirt road because instant gratification overwhelms. At the end of a two-minute call about nothing. When trying on clothes because a new season of fashion approaches. When you receive a bouquet of flowers for no apparent reason. When playing guitars cross-legged knee to knee. While selecting foreign films at the local video store. While on a bridge debating risk. When lost in the bad bits of Marseilles. At an amphitheater where Chinese acrobats excite you. On the beach next to a no-trespassing sign. On a glass-bottom boat tour when you're too sunburned to move. While hiking toward a reticent sunset. On an idyllic hill that looks better at night than during the day. On a turbulent plane because you think you might die. Before being encumbered by sleep, after putting the quietus to a day. And on New Year's Eve because it's the thing to do.

But something happened; I saw four stenciled colors of a vibrant rainbow thru an open breeze. And I knew it was symbolic of promises and love and forever.

As a result, I wrote these little amateurish verses, Now Tell Me, in third person seventeen years ago when reality devoured my imagination. Where my imagination led to marriage, to a guy who might've thought this:

Now tell me
Who wipes your tears away
Who makes you smile on his better days

Now tell me
Who is your soul-mate
Written in the stars destiny or fate

Now tell me
Who picks you flowers
When the clouds are in your eyes

Now tell me
Who proves he loves you
When you doubt there is love at all

And I now say "I love you" when I have everything else on the tip of my tongue. Because the curse has been lifted and love reigns in irristable splendor. It's an apposite need. It's redeemable and insistent. Here I know my opinion has altered because in all of the possible places to say "I love you" I now mean it within. It's relaxing and peaceful. It's compulsive and intense. It deserves impunity. It's sacred and enviable. It's inescapable and undeniable. It's synonymous to existence. And you find it, incoherent, when you talk in your sleep, in the middle of the night, when you panic that he's not there. And you never have to say "I love you because..."