Love

I fall in love all the time. I fall in love with everything I see--people, places, songs, artists, images, words.

I fall in love with the view from the top of the Basilica di San Pietro melding ancient ruins and modern architecture into one breath. Guidebooks warning me not to fall into the canals of Venice and bored, thin boys with dirty hair and fedoras lazing around London's Brick Lane. I fall in love with Beth Gibbons's voice moving seamlessly between harsh and nasal to soft cooing. Thom Yorke's falsetto screeching emotions that I wish I had felt first. Jeff Buckley all bleeding hearts and self-pity, crooning songs about regrets that cling tight to his skin no matter how hard he scrubs. I fall in love with anonymous phrases on a page painting landscapes of experiences I haven't yet had. Photographs of strangers engaged in joy bursting candy colors of hugs and smiles, lips puckered into air kisses, fluorescent drinks in hand. I fall in love with people I meet once and dream into monoliths of perfection sliding coolly in and out of rooms, scenes, situations.

This is my modern romance. This is how I fall.

I know it's never real. It's a flighty thing that tumbles off the rooftops of buildings in cities I've once loved, and forgotten the instant my plane touched ground on where I needed to be now. The music grows tedious and tired, faceless words get a face that doesn't live up to the fantasy I've intricately formulated in my mind. Photographs fade into painful reminders of happier times that left to take residence in someone else's life.

But every now and then a memory returns and, for a moment, I feel that fondness again. I place my hand across my chest and I close my eyes and think of how much I loved. I love, love, love--all the time. An adoration so deep it bends me in half; makes me want to peel the skin off my bones and see how something so consuming could live inside me. Directed towards everything but holding onto nothing like the wind blowing in and licking my cheeks briefly before going away. And no matter how hard I cling, it slips through my fingertips like grain.

-L