Belonging to Love

Belonging to Love

It grew cold and snow began to fall. The man felt chilled to the bone, or rather chilled to the heart. For it seemed he had no living organ there, at least none that did what he thought it should do.

Wasn’t love supposed to come from the heart? He recalled those for whom he had declared love in times past. Where were those feelings that had seemed so strong and overwhelming at the time? Could something so transient really be called love?

If love was desire, then for him it had run its course long ago. He desired nothing more from this world.

Love that merely entices and excites, love that seeks or must be sought, love that is fervent and binding, love that is jealous, makes labels and gives rights of possession, love that can justify blame and guilt – this was the love he knew . . . and hated.

“Better to be alone forever,” he thought, shivering among the snowflakes.

He considered true love to be as distant from him as the dark masses of swirling clouds overhead, as far as the mountaintops on the horizon, even unto the very stars glinting down from galaxies light years away.

True love was an essence so subtle that it eluded all attempts at capture and could only be perceived through absolute surrender, even death.

At the same time he believed this love to be so enormously strong and powerful that the foundations of the universe and all life rested upon it without strain or effort.

Raising his arms, he gazed past the clouds to the constellations above, swirling in galactic delight throughout the eons – silent witnesses to the etheric immensity of love.

“Oh to belong to this,” he sighed.