Trust me, Throw Love out the Window

You’ve met her, haven’t you? Vagabond emotion dressed in red, flirting with loneliness and desire, kidding you into believing when all the time she has disturbing reasons for visiting.

Beware, okay? I’m telling you straight she will give you sleepless nights.

Yes, yes, I remember the morning she arrived, the rising July sun spreading across the Scottish hillsides. My idiot dreams all intact and flowering. That was the exact day I opened my hearts door. Love walked in, the beggar girl, the monstrous child, how little she cared.

I was never really in control of the undertaking. I was dragged from room to room and in each found some new glad adventure. There were days when I was content to stretch out on a pallet of straw, beguiled by her impossibly beautiful voice. How little she cared.

She took advantage of my weaknesses, coming as she did to the sound of nature's music, amusing me with lightning and thunder, disgusting me with stinking early morning mouths, blood shot eyes, and semen-stained sheets.

We lived on the beach of faithful children.

She brought to me the spoils of long walks, misty rains, castle walls, and golden chains that linked stars in the great powdery blackness. It was on those evenings she brought to me the crackle of a rosy fire, her heart smoldering against mine, and together we ate our fortunes and desires.

I find myself standing at the edge of the ocean, my wife’s grave, whispering to her to get out of that place, raise her head one more time. I’d take her to Spain or Constantinople, ride rickshaws in Rangoon, and I would buy her Paris, not roses like everybody buys everybody. She never hears.

Love will drain a man's strength and offer no wisdom. I’ve tried in my work to speak with effectiveness and with respect for the world at large. I try to live with quiet dignity but sometimes something takes over and I stamp and rage, thrashing words down in anger.

I was an adolescent when she came and left me more a boy than I cared to be.

That’s the thing about her. She will go away. Either you will leave, or she will. That’s when you acquire the cold taste for churches. Bells rung in steeples, teasing you with the thoughts and sounds of a forever together.

Priests, as fat as fish, marry you but it is an incomplete education. I’m no more than a castaway raising a sail on some distant pond as I make my metaphysical voyage to understand her absence. There is no understanding. There is only acceptance.

When love comes into your life, dressed in red, flirting with your needs and desires, treat her respectfully. Make out of anything the stuff of fortunes and dreams; you’ll need them if you’re to keep her breath smelling sweet. Don’t dawdle in clouds or lie down on beds believing time is on your side; it isn’t.

But that’s all over. She’s turned away. I drift on memories as if her taste will happen on my tongue. Love did not dress me up for the eventualities of loss but left me ragged and more than momentarily afraid.

Devotion in love is a killer.

I’m done with it. I will dance alone no more. I have cast it out, spat the spirit on the sidewalk, and I’m heading for the beginning of time.

"Come to me from always," she said, "and we’ll go away everywhere together."

Listen to my wisdom, throw love out the window before she breaks your heart.