Sometimes, love simmers and bubbles.
You cover it with a lid, sealed until you’re ready to eat. Until it’s warmed through and you’ve finished baking the bread and mixing the drinks and reading the paper. As you pour it over your plate and bring it to your lips, it’s just warm enough to ward off the threatening chill of winter. Just enough so you can feel your fingers and toes, the warmth creeping up your limbs, inching its way toward your chest. You reach the final sip, and although somehow you’ve known this love was finite since you first lifted the lid and smelled its salty intoxication, denial can be stronger than truth. The warmth fades as the last drop slides slowly down your throat. The empty dish, full of broken promises and high hopes of an eternal optimist, stares back unapologetically.
I never wanted anything serious — it was just casual.
Silly me.
The now-shattered plate, hurled against the wall in a final act of retribution, reflects what you’ve become. Fragile, scattered, emotionless. Lying on the floor, gazing blankly at the ceiling, you will tears to come, to no avail. Your heart put up its hands and ran after the sting of rejection, leaving your body dry and hollow.
But slowly, tenderly, you glue the jagged pieces together with cocktails, lukewarm coffee, long bike rides, and patient, faithful friends. After months of lifeless eyes, a smile blooms on your face and laughter lulls you to sleep. You feel better and whole, despite a few irreparable cracks you’re still learning to paint with gold.
And then, on an otherwise ordinary afternoon, you wrap yourself in the summer breeze and listen to the dirt path crumble beneath your tires. You squint in the sun as love emerges before you — active, bursting with life, and drenched in the pursuit of adventure. After all the years of breaking and gluing and breaking and gluing, of waiting for that simmer to turn to a boil, love strolls up beside you with a casual smile. Just as you’re lingering at the edge of cynicism, considering a dive head first, it smacks you in the face and shakes you from your resigned slumber. The plate is full again. Your heart grows and your smile begins to stick. But still, those cracks remain.
Those cracks.
Doubt runs a finger down your spine, assuring you you’ll reach the last drop and like before, he’ll realize you’ve been filling a hole saved for his past, only to leave you shattered on the floor,
but then.
Eyes fixed on yours, he presses a sunflower between your anxious hands. The existential meandering from just moments ago slips away. A fire roars beneath the undecided, fickle, simmering love you once took for truth, and a new reality settles in. Where the future is still unknown but the ground ahead feels solid. Where vocal vulnerabilities allow trust to flourish and we drink laughter with our tea. As fingers intertwine, the flutter of your heart dampens the ache you’ve never before managed to escape.
And finally, love surprises you once more as you feel yourself falling.
Surrendering.
Believing.
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