Gather

There are no pauses to the joys and woes of life and the living, yet, love relentlessly collects above us.

Love collects above us; like moisture does in the clouds, till they become grey and pregnant with rain. And then like rainwater, love breaks free in its own season. Everyone can tell when it rains; everyone knows it when love breaks free. They gather to collectively say, “Love is in the air.”

Many souls are open to love. Love settles on open souls like watercolor on soft tissue paper. Love presses on, imparts and hardens on folded souls like acrylic on hard canvas. Love gathers over running souls like oil on water. Little puddles of liquid resting on another liquid but never mixing in. Small pockets of character from most unlikely persons. Many will gather to solve riddles of how one so hard could produce a love so soft, so gentle, so out of character. Those puddles of love simply gathered and then, the love showed.

Love is settling in the air around you. It is clammy, cloying, like the heat of the tropics in October. It doesn’t make you do any kind things. Love is the tiredness in your bones when you are weighed down by the endless nothingness that stretches out before you; masquerading as your life. Love is the despair in the heart you are clutching as you sink to the ground in the restroom of some unknown cafe somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The force behind your tears. Love is the heavy chain of loneliness that keeps you close to the places where those who speak the language of your soul gather.

Love doesn’t give you a break. Love doesn’t care that you have a life, a job. Love gathers above you; like rain gathers to clouds and in its own season, it breaks free and settles in the air, wrapping you like a blanket, forcing you to feel. Love is the spectacle it makes of you. A simpering young man in full working class regalia; a shirt, tie, trousers and a dusty pair of Chelsea boots.

Love is the challenge it lays before you. Love calls you fragile. Love makes you cry. Love is the quest you go on to find answers to the questions that plague your soul. Love is the courage to sit with all your demons; all the ugly things you could be. Love is the strength in your arms as you bind them and gather them in one huge pile; setting fire to your nonsense. Love is your knowing that demons don’t die. Love is your resolve to bind and cast for as long as you need to, however often you have to. Love is all the strength you gather for your next burning exercise.

I wish that somehow, love will call my name when I am most apt to listen. When my flaws are not flying before my face like impertinent insects. I am too proud for the spaces where those who speak the language of my soul gather, so I am full of despair. Once, I told myself that I am too big for tears and although I said it as a joke, I started to take it a little too seriously. Now, I have no strength left to suppress my tears, but I cry and pretend like it never happened.

I try to fight my demons, obliterate all the ugly things I could be, but I end up in the sand, covered in my own failures. My demons look on and although they would burn me to ashes if they could, they are only soundless sentinels that land me on the ground when I try to fight them.

I go about the motions of my life and mark my place among the living; believing that love is collecting above me; like moisture does in the clouds, till they become grey and pregnant with rain. And that like rainwater, love will break over me in it’s own season. My soul will open to love and love will settle in my soul like watercolor on soft tissue paper.