At all costs I sought to give that which smothers you.

     I’ve been in love once. When the relationship ended, my trauma was realizing that who I was in love with wasn’t the person I had been involved with. It wasn’t a fabrication on my behalf (“. . .just as today our unsophisticated cameras record in their own way our hastily assembled and painted world.”), but a lot of false play and acting from the opposite end of the spectrum. Largely, it was, “I want to be, I want to be, yet I’ll never be.” (“Pretend all you want, you can cry to your heart’s own beat.”)
     From my end, I believe I was bodily in love. It felt as science defines it, so I imagine it was true despite the diamonoid fixture I directed it towards. I had never felt that way before in or out of love, especially when considering the bereavement I experienced following his initial absence. (“It was plain that he was upset by the loss of that precious object. It was plain. The loss of the object upset him. The object was precious. He was upset by the loss of the object.”)

     Someday, I want to fall in love with someone and selfishly reexperience the emotions I miss everyday. The constant fascination, a joy unexplainable, the desire to dedicate anything and everything I create (“Powerless to utter itself, powerless to speak, love nonetheless wants to proclaim itself, to exclaim, to write itself everywhere. . .”). I don’t hold reservation with trusting another person to the extent I did (“I know that I’ll have regrets, but that’s the price of one more lesson learned.”), but I am a bit wary at this point of a man’s promises if they sound the same. Maybe because it’s still fresh in my mind, but maybe lies are similar even if the people necessarily aren’t.
     More than anything, I want to care about another human being again with familiar passion. I had never felt more alive than I did when I was in love. Everything magnified and glorious beyond the norm, absurdly Nabakovian till the very last moment of fleeing a beheading. A muse, a grandeur inspiration of things I enjoy and dedicate myself too—that’s what I want love for, that’s what I want my altar to resemble.

     As for “the One,” it will be whoever my husband turns out to be. There isn’t a cosmic spider web of humanity separate from the aesthetic play of the popular notion. I don’t believe in divorce for my future. By default my husband will be referred to as “the One.”