Love is a terrible, terrible creature with many faces and many eyes and many limbs. It stumbles on its many arm-leg-hand-feet, and it walks slowly but steadily along the winding river of time. T here is no end to the river, just the river itself and how it ebbs and flows and runs its course, but eventually the river meets a bend in the earth upon which houses and shops stand. Love follows, because it always does. It is not so early in the day that the villagers are still asleep in their cots and it is not so late that they’ve busied themselves with endless loads of work. It is just the perfect window of the morning wherein the people of this homely place wander around the gravel streets to chatter with their neighbors, water the potted plants under the windowsill, and watch the orange-pinks of dawn melt into the blues of daydreams.
Love comes lumbering down the road, arm-legs stuttering, colliding, falling with each step forward. Love’s many, many eyes watch the townsfolk with a grand apathy—or perhaps neutrality, as Love does not know what to feel for these people, not yet. Someone, a baker or merchant or anyone, really, sees Love come shambling down towards the village. They do not scream. They stand in mute awe. Another person sees Love, and another person, and then another one, and another one, until everybody in the village square stares staunchly as Love hauls itself over the rocks and into the thick of the buildings. One unashamed soul steps forward and says, Oh how lovely you are, with your many faces and many eyes and many limbs. Oh how fair a creation you are, a love letter to us from the universe.
But Love does not think so. Love does not believe that it is anything like that: Love is not a thing of beauty, Love thinks, but something terrible. Something so terrible in its existence and abominable in its presence on earth. Love knows how ugly it must look because Love feels that ugly, too. Love says as much, but not so much in words as in groans and wails through its many faces and many mouths.
You are wrong, the people say. You are not ugly. Not at all. What you are is a gift to us who live here. You can never be a burden if you bring us such joy. But Love knows how this all goes. This is not the first time Love has come across a village, a people like this. It is not the first time nor will not be the last. Love knows that these humans will never understand what it is in its entirety, in its whole, unforgiving nature. Love knows that these humans will want it to stay, and it knows that it will hurt them, because that is what Love always does to people like this. Love creeps closer to the gathered crowd, and they ooh and aah with Love’s every movement. Someone—many someones—reach a hand out, and come close. Too close. Love has many faces and many mouths and many limbs. It has enough mouths. It opens all of them, and shows these people that it has many teeth, too.
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