love
if loving is not possession as many think, then maybe it is being seen, recognized, regardless of how transfigured. being known deep in your soul, seen for your flaws and broken promises and stories you tell yourself, things that you do to hold yourself back. it might not be this beautiful perfect, glowing thing... it's like a crumpled soft animal, loved anyways, loved in spite. and it's not always mutual... not some fairytale but actually kind of painful to be seen like that, in your nakedness, the instinct is to run and hide.
love is the anger that chokes up in my throat when I think of what went wrong and how we can't make eye contact anymore. sometimes the love is for what was once there, and you project it onto the person in front of you now. love in the way I still listen and try to read between the lines and find crumbs of what's left. accepting it's love for what once was, love for memories with nowhere to go, because I don't know you anymore, and so then it changes into grief. I have this annoying urge to always know what's happening, what's inside your head, what information could clue me in? I wish I knew if you feel the grief too, if you even care at all, but I have to step back off that slippery ledge and let go.
a week has passed now and I'm thinking about love again. whenever I visit my family I'm reminded of it, holding it so close. sharing memories from my mom and dad and uncle and sisters, it reminds me that they were all small once. I see my mom in old photos as a baby, I see my grandma at 16 with the same smile. my great-grandma minty moved to California at 18? and married an older man. he left her for another woman, leaving her with a 1 year old baby in a time where single motherhood was basically a crime. she worked in packing houses and as a phone operator, raised my mimi up all on her own, and met the great love of her life Smitty when she was 30 years old, then they traveled all over. my great grandpa on the other side, had schizophrenia and was committed to one of the most infamous asylums in the country. I was told he was a sweet man. his daughter had Down syndrome and was sent to the same place. They say she was able to hold down a small job. this was a sad time with a twisted idea of disability. his wife picked cotton in Colorado and then moved to California, too, with my grandpa and his brothers. she re-married a mean man. meanwhile, in Mexico, my dad and his siblings piled two-per-seat on the bus down south for 3 days and 2 nights with my abuelita. I'm just stream-of-concious remembering, remembering... my mom and her sisters would fight constantly but always hid it from their parents, because they knew they'd all get in trouble. my dad would lie to his friends in high school and say he had a curfew, even though he didn't- youngest of 9. there's so much love and pain in these histories. I walk past my grandparent's old house and resist the urge to ask the man on the porch to let me back in for one last look.