I have no ode to romantic love
I have no tales of warm beds and plump babies
This month I wrote and wrote and wrote
Hundreds of words on love and
None of them were of romance
Love with a capital nothing
A litany of loneliness, landscape and loss
Empty beaches, lost friends, battered paperbacks
The sunrise in beautiful unfamiliar places
The sunsets of relationships
The love of art in films and books and television
But with people?
Just an empty nothing
I love my family
I love my friends
But that love is complicated
It’s fiendish
It defies me, mocks me
Winds around my words
What is love?
Love is
Bad Indian films at Christmas with too much wine
Laughing so hard I wonder if I will ever stop
A cup of tea delivered on a cold morning
The afternoon in the pool
A crying child coming to you for a hug
It’s cooking breakfast at 5am and
Yelling at someone in your head instead of to their face
It’s
Boring
So ordinary
I can’t write it
It just is

Love, February