A Chance Encounter With Love

It doubtlessly won’t surprise many of you that I’ve been writing stories since I was a child. Here’s my latest spiritual allegory that combines all this spiritual wisdom juju that is flowing through me with the structure of a story. Enjoy!

A Chance Encounter With Love

Love lingers her lips on my brow. A bead of sweat pops out from my skin in anticipation of her next moves. But Love goes no further. Her hands hold my face as her thumbs run along the many lines, creases, and folds of skin. Her green eyes gaze intently into my own.

“What are you seeking, ” she asks.

“You,” I say.

She smiles in response, but shakes her head. She pulls my head to her breast and whispers into my ear, “You are seeking a fantasy. A mental contrivance. But I will never be that fantasy.”

Love pulls away from me to leave, depart, and be whisked away by whatever currents of life and fortune she so chooses. But I am bold this time, and I reach a hand to her wrist just at the beginning of her turn towards her departure. With a slight tap upon her skin, she pauses.

“Please stay, dear Love.”

She hesitates. Hesitates because the grasping she’d expected and had planned to evade was not there in my hands this time. She wavers because she’s watched many of my tirades, pursuits, and passions from afar, waiting until such a moment as this. She knew the kind of player I’d been, so she’d kept her distance until two weeks ago when we ran into each other at a bar–literally. Her walking out, having delivered something to a friend; me walking in, looking to “make” a friend.

It was not love at first sight though. It took longer. It was just a sudden, unexpected collision that altered something. Like two meteors colliding in space. The trajectory of both has to change. Unless, I suppose, one meteor is super huge or something. Like a super-meteor. And maybe she was a super-meteor and nothing in her course has changed, but I know that mine has.

“If I stay, what does that mean?” Her look slides to the side to evaluate me from the corner of her eyes.

“I don’t know, but if you go, I do know what that means,” I reply.

Love teeters on a wire, it seems. Strung out in two different directions, her desire to be free is caught by her desire to be held.

“But what of your past?” Love asks. “I can’t meet you there.”

“Then I will be here in the present for you. The past has nothing left for me.” I stand to embrace her, but she retreats.

“And what of the future?”

“What of it? We will build it…together, you and I. And it will grow the fruits that we both plant today.”

She smiles and waves a knowing finger at me. “Ah, such sweet sticky words. You’ve used them before to ensnare others. But will you continue to drive me towards that fantasy of your own fulfillment? Will you make me into that ideal that I can never be?

“Oh, no. I can love you as you are.”

“Oh really? And will you stay with me even as I am hard, tempestuous, and cruel?” Her green eyes harden like agates that bore into me.

I falter as that gaze delves deeply into me. I begin to see Love in her fullness. I see a side that had been hidden from me that is full of knives, saws, and heavy hammers, hanging from her belt.

Shocked, I ask, “Would you be so cruel to a lover?” My voice shrinks from her, disappearing into barely a whisper.

She steps forward. This time I give way. “I would be as loving as I am cruel, and yet that momentary cruelty would only be used in service of love.”

“Oh! You are a vile temptress.” I laugh spitefully. “You are a trick. You are not love at all. You are her shadow here to punish me for my past after all.”

“I already told you. I have no interest in your past. It is you that carry it and run to it. Even now, you are running to it, and I cannot meet you there. I am no mindless torturer, but you cannot see this.”

She turns abruptly and cracks the door open to slip out of my life.

“Wait!” I catch her at the threshold. “What is this harshness? Why do you bring it?”

She leans back into me and whispers, “I bring only what is needed. Have you not seen what you have brought?”

Love turns me towards a mirror in the corner of the room. She rubs her hands across its dusty surface to remove the haze. For the first time, I see the chains, the armor, and the many wounds upon me. A patchwork of defenses and decay cover my body.

I look to her again and see Love anew. I see a hack saw to cut away the chains to my family and unhealthy relationships. I see a hammer to pound open the armor that is crushing my chest and my body in its grasp. I see a scalpel to cut away dead flesh and re-open wounds to better dress and heal them.

“Oh,” I say in recognition. “Oh.”

“Yes, my dearest one. You can see me now. And this is just the beginning if you are to become my beloved. Can you submit to this love? Can you let me open you?”

I return to the mirror and feel the weight and pain of the wounds and the metallic nature of my mind crushing me. I feel the heaviness of expectations and past abuses. I gasp, and for the first time, I see the trap I have been in without Love.

“Yes. Yes I can,” I say.

And with a single stroke, Love crashes her hammer upon my chest and sets me free.