V Day

Musing on love as we don the fox hat and resist the syrup of this day every year.Love makes terrifying seraphs and beautiful monsters of us all. We don't fall in love. Not ever at first, we rise in it. Our hearts bloom and our blood rushes. We feel blessed that love has even briefly taken its shoes off at our front door, entered without knocking and made a hell of a smiling mess in our kitchen. We rest snug and delighted in the first hundred days. Love blossoms in simpatico. The strings in our chest gently plucked by another who may just have walked on by a hundred other days. That magic one, fated and fabled, they turn their lovely head to look.The mooning passes and the easy masks come off and love stays on, sending roots into the soil and wishing on the stars above. We make promises and whisper vows into each others skin. I becomes we, accepted gratefully. We plant tiny seeds in our lovers and pray for their blooming.Love yet remains a cunning houseguest, unpredictable in its favours and fluid rules. It cannot be dressed up or bartered for another elixir, one easier to swallow that doesn't stick in your throat. Love withers when ignored or expected to do the work all by itself unsupported. Love will not chase you when you run away from it. Love will not jump crying in front of you if you trade its favours for the lesser gods that rule our hustling world. Love will not call itself by any other name and will not answer when you do.Love marches you unwilling to the face of the fire and demands you walk through it. The flames singe your watering eyes and pluck at your locked chambers. The beautiful terror of transformation is ever present, beckoning to your thudding heart. Love never ever leaves you unmarked. Love's tenderness is the reward for the great courage to tame your demons so they might play nicely with the others.Find love tucked away in you, this day and all others, just waiting to be given away. And when it is offered to you on shaking hands, be brave and gentle enough to accept what it will require of you. Our greatest adventures are weaved by love's eternal longing for itself. Art 'Longing' by SoojWords © Kerrie Basha, 2018