A Measure of Love

Measure the sea. Sink an anchor to its stony depths, to the cold heart of it…

Measure the sky. Tie chains on a bird and count the links from the eastern sky to the west, where the sun sets…

Measure the universe. With intimidating numbers and theoretical, nightmarish incomprehensibilities encase the entirety of it in a foreign formula.

How deep is the sea?

How far is the sky?

How indefinable is the universe?

None measure up to the brokenness of my love.

Have I been sinning all along, then? Have my loved ones become my idols?

I love too deeply, deeper than humanity was meant to love.

And since I am not God, my love saves no one. Not even me.

Can the sea, the sky, the universe of my love save me from wounds?

No.

This love…unfathomable as it may be…

Is more fragile than the crystalline wing of the evening moth,

More vulnerable than the babe laid to rest in his crib by the wide-open window,

More incomplete than one awakening from a dream and wishing to know the end of it.

What’s love worth, in the end?

God’s love saves me. My blood-loves will never forsake me…

But will a kiss ever be sweeter than imagination purports?

Will the warmth of humanity ever immodestly caress my immodesty?

Will a love as deep as mine ever give the anchor a sea floor to touch,

The chained bird a limb to rest upon,

The universe an ethereal, revelatory end?

Love is a question mark without the period.