When I think of love -- not static love, not Hallmark love, but whirly-dirly over-the-moon explode and fall to contented pieces love -- when I think of love, when I see or read a true note of it, there is a small, tucked corner of my heart that makes itself inexorably known. It is pinched and folded in on itself. It is far beneath the breastbone and ventricles and meat of my pulsing life. And still, when I think of love, when I see an instance of love that reminds me however distantly of what I've felt before, that tiny nugget tucked in on itself becomes more of me than the rest of myself combined. How can such a small, worried piece be so irrepressibly whole?
It's a comfort, this corner. If I wonder whether romantic love is now beyond me, something I've dealt with too roughly in the past to call back someday, I need only recall this piece of my heart and its overwhelming power. No matter what uncertainties I face in life, I know that this corner, redoubled on itself as it is, is totally out of my control. It's a bider. It bides its time. Every once in a while, un vez en cuando, it is the stalactite that drips into the dark, deep pool of me, sending ripples out to my frigid borders. Its call says "wait, and I may rise again. There will be more."
There is a tucked corner of my heart more powerful than myself. It is a small, clipped bud. Yet it is raw and tamed only by itself. It waits. It knows the truth of me that I often forget. It is a knot, a node, that holds my oft crumbling form in place.
And when I think of love, it sings.
