Life’s been flowing really smoothly lately,
\nsuch that the year is passing quickly;
\nand somewhat lacking in moments of stunning catharsis.<\/p>\n
Yesterday was summer. We danced out at the Evergreen campus
\nin the main square while students sat outside on the grass
\nand forgot their studies in the sunshine, eating healthy
\nlunches and watching the grass think it’s spring.
\nUnseasonably warm.<\/p>\n
Talking with Emily about love, and the process of saying
\n“I love you” for the first time to someone. We were together
\nfor three and a half years, but almost didn’t last out
\ntwo months because she told me she loved me and I just smiled.<\/p>\n
The summer just before Emily and I met was an odd one.
\nTheo and I had arrived home from France in June,
\nand we spent the entire summer hanging out at a dive,
\nwriting poetry and philosophy and talking about relationships.
\nI also assisted with a french class on campus,
\nwhere I met a young woman named Whitney.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it was post-France fervor,
\nor a misplaced, overzealous confidence
\nnow that I was a world traveler;
\nI walked the neighborhoods ’til four in the morning,
\nI left notes and flowers, wrote poems,
\nstared at the stars and sighed melodramatically.
\nI belonged in 19th century Paris that Summer,
\nburning at both ends, a bottle of absinthe in one hand,
\npen and paper in the other.<\/p>\n
Whitney gave me the runaround for awhile,
\nI came to terms with a lot of things and mellowed out.
\nIt ended abruptly, somehow with no loose ends
\nthough we never talked to resolve anything.<\/p>\n
The summer trailed into Fall, and the Russia program.
\nI knew Emily was going to be in the program,
\nbecause I’d talked to her sister, Anne, over the summer,
\nand she had mentioned it. Anne has mentioned it to Emily
\nas well, and told her to look for me.<\/p>\n
From such simple chains of events are life-altering
\nrelationships formed.<\/p>\n
My summer rambling and roamings had left many ideas
\nlingering in my head. Two of which:
\nPeople say<\/i> “I love you” too much, and why?
\nWould it be possible to emote love obviously and often
\nenough that ever saying the words would be redundant?
\nAnd more sensibly, to never say those words without
\nfirst being absolutely sure that they were true,
\nand that I could live up to the promise that they made.<\/p>\n
A relationship isn’t a sterile lab, where one can
\ntest the ideas one’s posited on paper alone in
\nthe bowling alley restaurant while horse-racing
\nplayed on a 20″ television and people bet in the bar.<\/p>\n
Even so, I think the ideas are sound.
\nThe first, perhaps only if you’ve discussed it,
\nand you’re on the same page.
\nI’ve come to think there’s no harm in saying the words,
\na thousand times an hour each day, if you mean them.<\/p>\n
I stand by the second more strongly.
\nYou can’t tell someone you love them
\njust because they want you to.
\nI’d like to think it was noble of me,
\nbut who’s to say it wasn’t just needless torture?
\nI delayed a month before I told Emily I loved her,
\nand I was sure of it when I said it,
\nbut we almost didn’t make it through the month.<\/p>\n
We give these words such power over our happiness.
\nInversely, they have such a bearing on our sadness.<\/p>\n