Love is a strange thing. Now, attraction I can understand. It’s biologic, it had an evolutionary need. Devotion, too, I understand. But love? It can be attraction, it can be devotion, it can be both, it can be neither. It is foreign, seemingly incorrect on so many levels.

Why is it that we fall in love? We love to say love is from the heart, but obviously a giant organ beating blood toward the rest of your body isn’t where that intensity originates. The mind, maybe, but that seems too on the nose.

And is love even intense? You see it on the media all the time, that love equates to passion, sacrifice, theatrics. But then that means I’ve never felt love, and neither has a significant portion of the human population.

From what I’ve observed, love is most often quiet. It’s quiet when I cook you dinner every night, because you couldn’t use a spatula if your life depended on it. It’s quiet when you sit in the yard with your earbuds in, memorizing every word to my new favorite song. It’s quiet at night when we warm both sides of the bed with our bodies, not touching yet forever entwined. It is rarely a sharp stab, more of a dull ache, a soft humming in the back of the mind, but it’s there, it’s always there.

So I believe that love does not originate from any part of the body, yours or mine or hers or his. It simply _is. _It sits in the air, never leaving or fading, forever present wherever one goes. It’s just that we don’t notice it until we want to, and when we want to, we say we’re in love.

There once was a man who had a farm But a drought killed his crops and the animals in his barn

Little did he know his crops were filled with ticks But now they are gone so he doesn’t get sick

And now this man is in perfect health So he lives to 102 with a lot of wealth

But then he learns his estranged son died, circumstances unclear Whom he hasn’t spoken to in 20 years

He learns that his son had a daughter, 23, He otherwise never would’ve been allowed to see

He meets her and his world feels blessed and cool But his granddaughter deceives him and steals his late wife’s jewels

But those jewels were originally stolen from a Sultan He comes a-knocking to kill the thieving charlatan

This man has no jewels so he gets left alone But the Sultan kills his granddaughter, now he is on his own

He feels very sad, so he decides to go on runs And the exercise and fresh air makes him look very young

Handsome like when he was 80, he goes to the town square A younger woman sees him and she falls in love unaware

But she has a temper and he has a wandering eye She plans to poison him this very night

So he dies the day before he turns 104 Any longer, he’d have nothing left to live for

His life: was it bad? Was it good? It’s a question of how much, not could or would or should.

……………There is something that I want Very Very Much No it’s Not Mine

                             But I
                         Can’t   Stop
                      My              Mind
                   From              Going
                   To that dark place
                 And                    When
                I close                  My eyes
             The bad                  Comes


                  And                      Then
                  It’s                     Too
                  Late                 To
                  Escape         So
                  I don’t stop
                  Myself      From
                 Losing         Control
                  Over                 My
                  Mind                  My
                  Body                  My self.


                  It’s become something
                  More
                  Not
                 Just
                 A craving, an indulgence
                 It’s
                 A
                 NEED
                I don’t know how to stop.

He had markings along his forearms and his neck, across the backs of his hands and into his abdomen. They weren’t scars, nor were they tattoos. They were stories.

When she first met him, she saw nothing unusual. He looked like an ordinary person. But as time passed and their hearts grew fonder, she could see a light glowing from within his blood, dancing and singing out to her.

His left bicep told her about a man who had fled his country, and could not go home and see his family until fifty years later, when the war was over. His wife had re-married. He didn’t recognize his children.

His back said the tale of a woman who had braved the seas to forge a better life for her family, a new life in her stomach. She had dreams and hopes and aspirations.

His collarbone contained the adventures of a girl who found that family was not blood, but who you chose to be with. Every day was his to make, every choice was his to decide.

There was nothing on his neck. It was a blank page, yet to be filled with ups and downs and lows and highs. But some nights if she squinted hard enough, she could see the glowing symbols start to form, and she learned about a boy who had stories in his blood that only his true love could read.

Our love will stand the test of time.

She wiped the dust off of the mirror, peering into it. Her own reflection stared back, but she hardly recognized herself. Her hair was disheveled and her face was muddy, after digging through the ruins all day. This was it. This was what she’d came for.

She wiped the dust off of the mirror, peering into it. Her own reflection stared back, but she hardly recognized herself. She was all dolled up, her skin white and her cheeks red. Her black hair shone, the front pinned up, a blossom threaded through. But the look on Kang’s face when he saw her made her feel more beautiful than any amount of makeup could.

It was the only thing in the whole village that had survived the fire. Somehow, the mirror remained in perfect condition. No cracks, no spotting. It glowed. And she knew, right then, that there was something special about this mirror. Something made it live on when everything else was destroyed. She could feel it. She could feel the power.

It was the only thing in the whole village that had survived the fire. Somehow, their love remained in perfect condition. No cracks, no spotting. It glowed. They would have to leave and start over. It wasn’t going to be easy, especially with the baby on its way. But nothing was ever easy, and she was glad to face the darkness with Kang by her side.

When life gets hard Where the buildings tower It’s time to stop And smell the flowers

When life gets hard Fading in a crowd Just say my name And say it loud

When life gets hard With the same old routine It’s time to leave Behind all you’ve seen

When life gets hard In the city air Just say my name You know that I care

Here life’s still hard But it tastes so mellow In a field of green And blue and red and yellow

Here life’s still hard But when the sun rises Feel a new you Who’s filled with surprises

Here life’s still hard Surrounded by birds As their beautiful songs Long to be heard

Here life’s still hard When you make it on your own But it’s a good kind of tough Building your throne

Life was as hard There as it is here But how is your choice There’s nothing to fear

We used to meet here, in this secluded area underneath the bridge. We leaned against the stone wall and skipped rocks into the river. Cars rushed overhead, driven by people who knew where they were going and knew what they wanted.

We knew what we wanted too.

Alice wanted to be on Broadway. She had a beautiful voice and beautiful eyes. Tom wanted to hike Mount Everest. He was five foot two but his soul was taller than any mountain the world. Lane wanted to see how small the Earth was from the moon. The stars weren’t half as bright as his eyes.

Me? I wanted to be a writer. A poet. A philosopher. John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Emily Dickinson. I have a bump on my left middle finger from how I always held a pencil too hard.

But adulthood came too fast, and it tore through us like a tiger rips its prey to shreds.

This place looks different in the winter. It was always too cold in December and January to hang out here, so we chatted at Joey’s Diner. This might be the first time I’ve seen the bridge like this: blanketed in snow, black ice covering the streets, icicles hanging from the bottom like teeth about to grind up and swallow my past until none of it is left and I am not even nothing, I just am.

Cars don’t drive on this bridge anymore. It’s too old. It’s been worn down with time. Nobody bothered to fix it, they just built a new bridge a few hundred meters away. It’s made of steel.

Life feels stagnant here. I lost my purpose a long time ago, back at Yale. I feel as frozen in time as the icicles that stare down at me, threatening to fall and pierce me straight through the heart.

I miss their warmth. I miss their fire.

They burned.

I’ve kept up with them on Instagram. Alice couldn’t make it to Broadway, but she teaches high school drama in Seattle. Tom just backpacked in Patagonia. Lane works as a computer engineer for NASA.

They’re happy. They’re fulfilled. I know them, even if it’s been years since we spoke.

If they returned to our spot under the bridge, they could make the ice melt and the snow disappear. They could heal the ruined bridge and bring cars back onto it.

But not me. Because I’m not happy. I’m not fulfilled. Life was harder than I expected, and I paid the price.

But twenty years ago I could have burned.

I miss our warmth. I miss our fire.

We burned.

The telephone rings into the night One time Two times Three times

The telephone rings into the night The stars watch in silence The moon is in tears

The telephone rings into the night Nobody is there to hear it

She is intense. That’s what I love about her.

The way she moves is intense. The way she speaks is intense. The way she loves is intense.

She loves with a purpose. Love is important to her. She doesn’t say she loves this pizza, she loves dolphins, she loves the Beatles. Love isn’t something idle or something to be shared freely. Love is something she reserves and she only gives it when she knows you’re worth it.

The way she sees the world is intense. She watches people like a hawk. She is a machine, about to anticipate their next action. She sees every possibility, every outcome before making her move. She is like an AI trapped in a woman’s body. Sometimes at night, I reach over to make sure she’s actually there, she’s actually real.

She prioritizes fact over feeling. Probability over humanity. Acting over caring.

She tells me she was born this way. She was coded this way. She couldn’t change the way she was, so she chose to use her abilities to do good. To save those in need of saving. To stop those who need to be stopped. On the streets they call her a vigilante, a saint, a killer. I call her Lover.

I am someone she saved, from a dark place in my head many, many years ago. I don’t understand her. I never will. I know I love her, and I know she loves me. I know that because she loves me, her facts and her probabilities will always be for my survival. Because the statistics told her that I matter more to her than she matters to herself. I know that she would always choose me, no matter what, in a thousand different lifetimes.

And I now know that she would choose to save me over saving the world.

“Every night, when you close your eyes and drift off to the Dream World, you see Him. Every morning, when your alarm clock rings and you regain consciousness into the Real World, you see Him.

“He does not have a body. He does not have a face. He does not have a soul. He is not anyone or anything, he simply is.

“And here at Dream HQ we call him Bob! Everyone give it up for our Dream Catcher of the Month!”

A dark substance fogged up the air at the front of the auditorium, an ominous silence following his appearance.

The crowd erupted into cheers and applause. “You rock, Bob!” a woman in the back called out.

“Thank you for helping our Nightmare Disorder research department!” a man in glasses agreed. “You’re helping out the people in the Real World so much!”

“We love you, Bob!” they shouted in unison.

Bob seemed to bend and separate into a smiley face.

“Awwww!” an elderly woman cried out. “You make us so happy too little Bobby Bob!”

The presenter on the dais cleared his throat, bringing the attention back to him. “Bob is just one of our many Dream Catchers. Former Dream Catchers of the Month include Jimmy, Gerald, and Bill Nye the Science Guy. We award this prestigious title to the most hardworking Dream Catcher, who has caught the most traumatic dreams and nightmares of our people down in the Real World. And remember, this kind of work is perfectly humane, after all, these beasts feast on nightmares.”

He turned to the screen behind him. “Bob here has traveled over the seven continents, yes, even Australia, to catch 10,000 of the worst dreams of humanity and forever exterminate them from the mind of any person in the Real World. His numbers are triple the previous record of nightmares caught in a month. Past catches include genocide, a giant Brazilian Wandering Spider devouring your small cat, and pooping out chinchillas. Let’s look at some of his catches, shall we?

“Remember to be civil, ladies and gentlemen. These may seem horrifying to us, but they are Bob’s favorite foods! Imagine: macaroni and cheese, caviar, filet mignon, crème brûlée…”

The crowd oohed and ahhed at the thought of their favorite meals.

He clicked a button and the first slide appeared.

The crowd gasped.

“Number one: running through a sunflower field with my daughters Emma and Ella.”

The presenter frowned. “Oh, uh, that’s odd. Normally, the dreams are a little more… traumatic.”

He shrugged it off. Bob was beaming with pride, so it must have been one minor mistake. He clicked onto the next slide. “Fostering three adorable tuxedo kittens.” He laughed nervously. The crowd fell silent. He coughed, hitting the remote and looking around for some help. “Something must have gone wrong in the processing machine. Uh…” He looked to Bob, who showed no signs of concern.

His supervisor in the crowd gave him a stern look and signaled him to keep going on with the presentation.

“Don’t worry, this is either a machine failure or someone’s idea of a practical joke.” He clicked through the presentation, but it kept getting worse. Every mosquito disappearing from the face of Earth. Getting proposed to by your high school sweetheart at the first place you met. Going on one last backpacking trip in France with your late father. Reuniting with your childhood friend after losing touch for twenty years.

The presenter scoffed, looking at Bob, who was now forming a heart. Could he… no. No. “It can’t be,” he breathed. “There’s no way…”

He looked to his supervisor in the crowd, getting redder and redder. Oh, no. He was going to lose his job now, wasn’t he? What was wrong with Bob? Why did no one notice his abnormal catches?

He knew why. They operated under the assumption that every Dream Catcher liked consuming the bad dreams, the gruesome ones, the devastating ones. But that wasn’t true at all, and Bob here was living proof.

His supervisor was making his way through the crowd now, definitely to shut down the failed presentation. The presenter’s breathing was heavy as he watched Bob, who seemed so innocent, so oblivious. He had no idea what he had done. What Dream HQ had done.

“Look at these dreams, Martin!” his supervisor would shout in his ear tomorrow morning. “Animals! Parents! Love! Gorgeous views of the world! All lost!”

But Martin was a changed man. As he watched them chain up Bob and take him back into his jar, about to screw the lid on and throw him in sleep medicine, the only thing that could kill Dream Catchers, he did something unimaginable.

He couldn’t take this anymore. He couldn’t watch them enslave a living, breathing organism, no different than any of them in the room: probably better than them. He had rationalized it in the past, telling himself Jimmy and Gerald and Bill Nye were monsters who enjoyed human suffering. But Bob changed everything. It shook everything he thought he knew, everything he was taught from a young age. Because Bob was just like him. He liked the same things as a human being. He took pleasure in the same things as a human being. He knew what love was. He knew what happiness was. Why should he suffer for that?

The presenter didn’t know what to believe now, just that this wasn’t right.

He was just one man. He couldn’t save the Dream Catchers. Dream HQ would get rid of him before that.

But he could still save someone.

He grabbed the open jar and threw Bob out the window. He would plummet for an eternity, until he finally reached the Real World. And then he’d be free.