Love is the Drug

Whether you love to read or write, or both, you will often come upon a common theme: love. Nearly every writer has written about love in some form. Love is a powerful emotion which convinces us to do the most astounding things, take the silliest of actions, and make the most shocking choices. Love also amazes us. It leaves us flabbergasted. It shapes our lives. It allows us to taste the outermost boundaries of living.

A past teacher, a poet, once wrote to me: “Every day the world bothers to be beautiful. All we have to do is show up.”

I recently took the Core Values Exercise, and wasn’t surprised to find that Love ended up being my essential value in life. I believe that the ability to love is at the root of everything. It allows us to hold our friends and family dear, it brings us joy and happiness, and it teaches us peace and wisdom.

We all love in many ways. I’ve loved friends like they were family. I’ve loved a cousin like a sister. I’ve loved with a passion that burned my skin, intoxicated my mind, and throbbed through my blood. I’ve loved with a sweetness that kissed my bruises, caressed my face with smiles, and breathed softly into my being.

A past teacher, a poet, once wrote to me: “Every day the world bothers to be beautiful. All we have to do is show up.”

"Once I had a lover-

he was twenty.

And Cuban and, oh..."

How old were you?

"I was thirty-nine."

I also had a lover

who was twenty,

only a few years ago.

I think about getting

married at times, then I

think about being forty

and having affairs with twenty year olds.

My ink smudges against your fingertips,

I unfold for you like a favorite letter kept

Curled in your warm breast pocket.

Heat from your tender fingers betrays

All of your eager desires. My envelope

Lies, like discarded clothing, on the floor.

These two poems capture different kinds of love. I wrote the first poem when I was single. I loved the adventures life threw my way. I had love affairs with my friends, each of them fulfilling a different piece of me. I loved wild and free. I wrote the second poem a year and a half after I got married. It is one of the few acrostic poems I’ve written. I had never experienced such a deep, consuming love as this. While brainstorming for this poem, I wrote in my journal: “Being married takes a lot of hard work, but it doesn’t feel like work because it is love.”