Love is...

Love is bliss, and romance and ecstasy and safety and comfort and beauty and invitation and reciprocation and open doors and social justice and listening patiently and consent and freedom and acceptance and light.

Love is too confusion and longing and sorrow and get out, stay out and smothering and frustration and judgment and isolation, expectation and insecurity and grief and disappointment and loss and shame and confinement and desperation.

Or...is it? Perhaps, love is only a word.

Maybe it is our own bliss and romance, our own confusion and longing. Perhaps Love is a symbol, as all words are. But even more, is it a scapegoat for our most misunderstood and oftentimes embarrassing feelings and actions? Feelings and actions we may be too afraid or lazy to more clearly define?

Perhaps we do it all for love. Or, perhaps we do it for ourselves and love... is only a word. What would love become if we paused to reflect onto ourselves what we project onto it?

I don’t know for sure, but I do wonder.