Love Grew

Love started out as a glance. A notice of appearance, of countenance, of demeanor. It did not yet know it was love.

Love grew into talking, into internal giggles, and into verbal analyzing with girlfriends. What did he mean by this, what did he mean by that? Could anything come of this hint of promise?

Love progressed into feelings. The increase of heart beats, the delicious aftertaste of a joke, a shared smile and the full silence after long phone calls.

It grew and it grew until it became the shape of life itself beckoning it's subjects to make choices to join and create a life all on their own. It's sweetness was unknown, foreign but always imagined and now treasured.

At what point did love grow hard? Was it when it didn't know it yet existed? When it didn't know it had arms and legs extending into and changing the very lives it touched? Was it when it metamorphosized into something more than intense feelings, more than day dreams and movies? Was it when it slowly, and painfully transformed into meaning and purpose forcing those who beheld it to metamorphosize and transform themselves?

It no longer took the exciting shape of story filled emails, secret love letters in the mail, spontaneous gifts of jewelry. It became cutting sandwiches into quarters because they taste better that way and feeding spoonfuls of soup into the mouth of a once robust and capable but now debilitated lover. Love offered it's body and mind in exchange for the body and mind of a smaller, but beautiful, other. It became sacrifice and giving, not just of things, but of oneself and of giving up the part of oneself that hurt others.

Love became confusing yet also deep and poignant. Love was no longer just bliss but sadness as well. Love became what is may not have been before, more real.