She is her.

Mostly noun, given,

And she is an English teacher and shall berate me should she find this;

but she is her. Beyond grammatical repair, or rule of prose.

I do not care, for she is why I am me.

And if she does see this- you are her.

My aunt- a woman more mother then extended family,

a woman who's heart can break and bend.

A human so giving nobody notices until her efforts are missing,

a human so sweet the earth cried the very day she got sick.

I remember it too well. I remember about her more than myself, like a broken bone.

It aches now, her pain- my bone.

Her feelings are mine- only I feel them.

I feel them miles away, and do I feel them deeply.

I react how she cannot, due to her heart.

I react when she is not sure how to.

I bow my head at her anger, and revel in her praise.

If my grandmother is the queen, my aunt is her heir beyond birthright.

She spent the last of her serotonin on my laughter.

She spent the last of her smiles on us all.

And I gasp from the severity of the loss.

She is still with us- which is why I reflect her pain.

She is sick. But she is her.

Within my scar tissue exists her- within my flesh,

within whatever is good to me is given by her.

Love is her. She is love.

a word

it's true

I fall--

I trip over this, and others

yours and mine--

and those now

prostrate,

in public

domain

that have slipped,

on spit or ink

into future hands,

and still,

I feel somehow

it has grip

action, individual,

personal meaning

enough,

to stab me

in the back

--even

Love was a noun.

A proper noun.

And everything Edward Love

Did was proper.

Predictable.

He always stayed

In his lane,

Always colored

Inside the lines.

Until the day Edward Love

Found love,

The verb.

And Love, the proper noun,

Became imprudent.

Unpredictable.

Sometimes veered

outside his lane,

and colored wildly.

All to gain the attention

Of the object of

His love.

When she finally said “hi,”

Edward Love

No longer resembled

A proper noun.

Love is a predicated verb

With dangling modifiers

Participially absurd

With prosaic desires

Love is a word

Monosyllabic, inciting

Alveolar but blurred

Liquid consonants inviting

Love is a mood, an appositive, indicative,

It recites imperatively substantive

When launched with a sortie of fricatives

It subjugates the declaratively imperative

Love is an active verb, its subject subjective

And conjunctively subjunctive, disjunctive

Its direct object recursively inflective

And intuitively parenthetically presumptive

Love is a paragraph in the active voice

Direct address, rhetorically suggestive

But intoned, under the breath, in passive voice

Between the lines reads a voice, passive-aggressive

Love is a published genre of speculative fiction

Clauses of claws of labio-velar approximant

Love is reprinted as micro-non-fiction

Punctuated by sighed ellipses...of malar contentment

Love is more difficult to diagram than sentences

Of life without the possibility of parole

A life of tandem attachment and attendance

Whose sum adds more than the parts of the whole

Rhyming the morphemes of codependence

More pedantic than calligraphic italics

More serious than the expected consensual transcendence

More predictable than the font of the chagrinned and the tragic

When love's regrets pronounce resentment imminent

And one begins to feel its message denominative

Each lover strikes out to be independently dissonant

But cannot escape becoming the predicate nominative

Love takes no prisoners—only direct objects

Objects indirectly, objectively captured

Actions of commission on selective prospects

Bolded and quoted for the infectively raptured

When love follows forked paths of least resistance

And comes to fruition in the epic poem risen

A new type of diction comes into existence

A new parlance, per se, lyrically written

Love is the sharable word

Monosyllabic, wide, and tall

Towering over the ineffable, unheard

The unspoken that says it all

It's always been a verb.

teasing, hoping, holding, waiting, touching, laughing, watching

Everything we've done together.

Finding a frog in the park, running away from the mosquitos.

Holding your hand in the backseat of the car, not knowing if anyone else sees.

Ordering pizza and standing on the sidewalk, dripping grease.

Holding you close, wrapping our legs together so you can never leave.

Driving three states away because you don't mind and I want to.

Kissing you in the darkness, never knowing how mad I've become.

Walking to the edge of the lake, looking over the horizon and past it.

Worrying that it'll go.

Hoping that we can make it work.

smiling, remembering, longing, taking, risking, listening, loving

It's always been a verb.

Nothing changed when we said it out loud, because we already knew.

It's hard to believe how much in love we were. You were my first thought when I awoke, my last before I went to sleep. In between, you were every step, every breath, every thing I touched, every thing I felt. I didn't care who I hurt, whether I lied or stole, what I left behind. There was only you, and for you there was only me. We said anything was possible with our love. We said we'd be willing to burn in hell for our love. We ditched our pasts and embraced our future.

It lasted a while. Then it unraveled fast. Love became contempt, mutual, long lasting. Contempt became our parting, mutual, everlasting.

Afterwards, I couldn't even think about you. I couldn't look at our pictures. At the gifts you'd given to me. Every memory brought anger and pain. To this day, though so much time has passed and I've moved on, I remember the bad feelings like they just happened. I remember the love too. That love—uncontrollable, carefree, careless—for which we were willing to abandon everything. That love, which assumed forever. That love, whose loss changed me forever.

In time I picked myself up and stitched my heart. My outlook warmed. I managed to love again too. But never like that. Never so lost and thoughtless like that. Love takes work, love takes discipline. That's the lesson I learned.

Despite everything, if I'm honest with myself, if I could go back in time to when you and I were together, I know that I'd do it all over again. I'd lose myself in that love and then I'd lose that love. Sadly, I'd do so even knowing what I know now. It needed to happen when it happened. But there's no going back now. Thank God there's no going back.

"I turned around and you weren't there."

She delivers the line after exiting a small-town grocery store ahead of him. Leaning against a vending machine for the local newspaper, she tucks a blonde flyaway behind her ear. Her grin is sweet.

"One day that's exactly how it will be, you know."

He is older, with several close calls in his rearview. At least one left scars, and a couple left bruises that never quite healed.

Her smile doesn't fade, but sadness tugs at the edges.

He takes her by the hand, and they're both happy to love in the moment.

Love is a dance of actions, found in the tender touch that comforts, the silent support that reassures, and the steadfast presence through life's storms. It's the gentle sacrifices made without words, the quiet promises woven into each day, and the choice to understand and grow together. Love is the melody of patient listening, the poetry of thoughtful gestures, and the ever-present warmth that lingers in every shared moment. It's the courage to be open and the strength to hold on.

Love is a verb, and in its doing, we find its deepest meaning.

I love you. (how)

I love in the way the sun loved the moon…she chases him daily into the horizon until in eclipse they finally meet. Years may go by without recognition…I will love you.

I love you. (how)

I love in the way the sky loves the earth…she waters him with the tears he causes. Unrequited; undeserved. Flowers will bloom…even when you hurt me…I will love you.

I love you. (how)

I love in the way a hen loves her chicks…she fiercely guards them; their life is precious. Tenderness gives way to ferocity if threatened.

I will guard you…I will love you.

I love you. (how)

I love in the way a dog loves her master. She licks his face after he’s left her alone all day. Innocent trust, enthusiastic affection, adamant loyalty. Even if your heart forgets me…I will love you.

I love you. (how)

I love in the way a verb adds movement to a sentence. I love you as an action and state of being. I will help you and ground you. I will make sense of your world…I will love you.

Like a seed, love is a noun.

Love is a seed planted within us all.

Like a seed, love can lay dormant, oppressed by layers of darkness. Trapped within infertile soil. A pulsating, pushing presence, frustrated!

Love must become a verb. Germinating, reaching, rooting. It must be nurtured, watered, fed. From seedling to plant, growing! Love is a verb.

Like a plant it relies on its environment, its community to grow.

Like bees to the flowers, love entices, love enthralls, love is beauty and nourishment. Scented and sweet, entrapping. Freeing like pollen on the wind. Love blooms in many varieties.

Its roots pervade our existence. Like a tree it is our breath. Like mycelium, it is our foundation.

It must be tended!