Love, now, is considered 'cute'.
That's all there is to it.
It's not looking up at the stars and
wishing for that same blazing fire
inside yourself.
It isn't those long, after-dark
conversations we had when
the constellations sang us melodies
in Ursa Major and Ursa Minor until
we remembered that I could play the piano
and you were alright on the recorder
and we joined in.
Sometimes, you'd stroke your fingers
through my hair, and my tears would
stroke the piano keys at the beautiful
audacity of your perfection.
Our shadows would intertwine,
flecked with tiny shards of the moonlight
and its spittle,
and it would seem to us that all
the great expanses and extravagances
of our universe had aligned to give us
this moment.
I'm told that wasn't love either.
No. Love is cute.
Love, according to the here and now,
is not what Shakespeare promised me
it would be.
It is not speaking the sort of words
that have stretched from the dawn of
the dawn of time and have tangled and
coiled and wrapped us together
like words are ribbons and we're
a human maypole.
It isn't seeing the sun and thinking
of the way your eyes lit up when
you first read my poetry.
After, you'd rise from where you sat
to the right of me, the east
and whisper to me how
lucky you were, how lucky we were
to be here, in this world, together.
Our hands would clasp, my small fingers
warmed by the inexplicably intrinsic
sense of togetherness.
Of you. Of me.
The two words blended like
we were only colours and this
world our painted grey palette.
None of it mattered.
None of it mattered, because none of it was love.
'Love', according to the modern mind, is simply
Cute.
We were boiled down,
like we'd been pushed into a pan and
they couldn't understand why we wouldn't fit
even once they'd chopped us up.
Everything - because wasn't love everything? -
was just plagiarised love letters scribbled on the
dog-eared corners of textbooks.
And though to us we were Nut and Geb,
Gaia and Ouranos,
Romeo and Juliet, if Romeo had
had your freckles and Juliet had
had my temper and they'd had
love built on the transcendence
of time instead of party crashing.
Except, to everyone else in the here and now,
we weren't. We weren't *******
Nut and Geb.
We were cute.
Somehow, love seems to equate to
you carrying my books around for me
like you don't have enough of your own to drag.
Love is suits and cravats and
prom dresses with stick on sparkles
because the night sky is no longer enough.
Love is kisses on the end of text messages
to replace the kisses in real life,
and pink and red heart emoticons to
pretend that we all still have hearts that are capable of
anything more than 'cute'.
And when I close my eyes and try to remember that it was real,
what we had, remember that it was the kind of untarnished love that
I could look in and see our reflection,
it's not your voice that I hear, but the words of 'love' in the here and now.
'You two are so cute together!'
'I wish I could have a relationship like yours. It's adorable.'
Quaint. Charming. Darling.
Cute.
Love, now, is considered 'cute'.
Even when it's not.
More than a myth than Nut and Geb ever were.
Even when it's real.
Especially when it's real.
That's all there is to it.