You're in love.

But be warned, it's not an easy place to be.

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You're reading "in love" like you would a state of being. Except it's more like you're in France. Or whatever place makes you happy. You're not in a state, but in a place, and while certain places affect our state (how could I ever be sad in London, for instance?), it's not the same. When you're in love, you look to the right and the left and feel it. Like I do now. On my shoulders and brushing against my belly.

Love is like an oats bath. Like fresh milk. It's clean because it allows me to forget all the ways in which I've been dirty before.

I'm at a sort of funny place which makes me want to write upside-down and make sense of the senseless (what tenacity. What foolhardiness, little mouse.). Love is. But not the mushy gushy left-of-center-intestine butterflies and soul critters.

I'm at a place in my life where I am learning to be in love even when my head clears. Where I am learning to hold space and hold on to the people who touch my soul. I feel with each new morning exuberant. And rich. So, so wealthy. To look around me on any given afternoon and see love is one day less when I need to experience hate, the hideousness of living for yourself, against your own self, with no one to cherish but yourself. That's not my idea of a desirable life.

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I've spent the better part of fifteen years being in love in the traditional sense. I've always had little loves and then slightly bigger loves. I've always designed objects of affection, but I've never been in this place before. I thought love was dependant on the person, but now I'm starting to think it's the other way around.

That my love is not man-bound, but universe-led. That all I have to do in order to stay here is be open. Be truthful. I let my light guide me, and I never need be out of love.

It's a beautiful place, but relocation has been challenging. I've realized that despite all the sonnets and the ballads, I do not speak the language. I struggle with love as a result of twenty-five years of having it explained to me in certain terms. I struggle seeing love is more and beyond and that the terms that best describe it... I don't understand.

I am a writer. If there is one thing I understand, it's words. Or so I thought. I read the definition of love on the walls and marvel at the taste of foreign syllables in my mouth. There follow long periods of silence. And those, I fill with song.
Songs like pathways through this unfamiliar place.