"Heart Shaped Bruises"

The English language can be such a frail thing. Although able to orchestrate the wildest stories or descriptions, it merely stands like a child in awe when faced with such things as feelings. It is limited--limited in the same context that an artist can never capture the full grandeur of an object, place, or moment. Summon me the most brilliant painters and ask them to etch the most magnificent piece imaginable of a small creek; it would prove my meaning. They can not contain the whole. Indeed, they may visualize the light coursing through leaves at a summer dawn or the ripples breaking over rocks in their journey downstream, but there is much else to be narrated in the scene--the birds who frequently come to play and be cleansed in the refreshing water, the appearance of liquid as more of a sheet of crystal than a stream in the winter, and the innumerable activities of life all maneuvering through this simplistic (yet, paradoxically, complex) environment at any given moment. In the same way, emotions make words seem as merely pebbles to be tossed with ease into a pond. However, there is one word that encompasses all this and more. I'm sure you've guessed it already...The one infinte word is "love."

It's a peculiar feeling--having so much to say about the one you love, but being so utterly lost for words because none can give due justice. In hopes of capturing what I feel, I might say something (sappy, but heart-felt) like this: "A valley complemented by all the most delicate flowers of the world only reminds me of someone more pleasant, and the butterflies can't dance as gracefully as you merely smile-- such a smile that would send any man to his knees." Given a mastery of speech, I'd use language to sketch a portrait of her that makes sunsets and rainbows look like child's play. But that's just it. To me, none of that truly suffices what is making my heart feel like it's about to explode with pure joy. So, often, when I try and articulate what's inside of me, my tongue merely flails in my mouth. Then, my thoughts so graciously come out as "I....you.....wow...Ahh!" Thank the Lord there's a word to take up where all others fail!

"So what is love?" you might inquire. That's like asking someone to touch the sky. True, they can do it, but the person is only grasping, with a loose finger hold, a small fragment of a vast expanse that is much more beautiful and wondrous than their eyes can take in. Defining such a word is comparable to demanding of an artist to etch every event of of the world onto one canvas with only primary colors. I can't appropriately explain to you such infinite things (Wouldn't being able to do so make me a god?). I'm a rational person. I think, examine, and rationalize. Yet this concept is too enigmatic too fit in any of those confining boxes. No wonder some find love veering over the edge towards insanity and say "We're all fools in love." Despite all this, I claim to "love someone." Maybe I can't wrap my head around something that already has me completely enveloped in it, but I've clenched those fingers tight and shall hold to whatever tiny fragment of it that I've comprehended as if it were life itself.

"If love is infinite, then hate must be also" you might add. Call me an idealist, but I would have to whole-heatedly differ. There's one defining factor of all products of hate--reducing to nothing. Now, while hate is a destroyer, love is a creationist. Love builds, strengthens, encourages, shelters, grants compassion and comfort. The worlds, dreams, and realities that can be created through it are infinitesimal. When one is to create something, there is no limits. Anything imaginable could be manufactured. On the other hand, malice can only debase an existence to zero. "But love hurts!" A sticky web you've spun by that tricky sentence! Still, saying thus would require of love to go against its very nature. I'm not trying ignore any such grief, but just as it's the absence of light that makes a room dark, it's the loss of love that hurts, not love itself. I know. It's a horrid shame that the pursuit of such a sublime wonder is the very thing that has hurt so many, but just because an animal is elusive, does not mean it can not be found!

But back to my point.

Admittedly, the word has been watered-down in contemporary culture, but, to me, it holds a paramount and unfathomable depth. Without it, I might be forced into perpetually writing a never-ending tale that could not surmount, in any extent, to what I feel. So, when the stars don't glisten nearly as much as her eyes; when the innocent bird's songs are shamed by just her voice over the phone; when her presence alone has the ability to procure a grin bright enough to illuminate the bleakest of nights; when seconds are sapphires, minutes emeralds, hours as diamonds; and when even the most beautiful phrases about her do not even begin capture my intentions, I'll rely on a few words that soar far beyond the skyline of others, a few words that could swallow up any essay, novel, or poem--- "I love you."