Welcome to Valentine's Day -- the day for either random Roman tortures or the commercialization of couplehood. Scrolling through Facebook this morning, I saw one or two articles on "Being your own Valentine" and a plethora of paeons to pairing.
I identify as polyamorous, a GrecoLatin hybrid loosely translating as many loves. One question I get from those brave enough to ask is, "So, you're really just sort of casually dating, right? I mean, you can't really LOVE multiple people; it would dilute out."
We have this notion of romantic love as something with a defined beginning and defined end and an almost pathologically co-dependent middle. But think about it -- I have three kids. I don't love each of them any less than I would if I had two or one.
I've found with polyamory not that I love any individual more or less than others or than I would if I were monogamous, but that I define love differently. I don't really break it down into the standard loose catagories of sexual love, platonic love, familial love, etc. anymore. Instead, I feel what I feel for each person in my life at any given moment. And I recognize that those feelings will shift and change with life and time.
So, here is my Valentine...
I will not love you – singular and only – in the nebula of “forever”
With doily-pocked hearts suffering atrial hypertrophy and ventricular strictures.
I love you-the-plural in the eternal moment of conjoined space and time where and when we each intersect
The cut-between of trails across our multiverses.
There is no greater or less than – symbolic alligators have no mouths and crocodiles only devour unworthy cardia.
Instead, I love you because you know to use a spoon and that Han shot first. I love you with a delivery of garlic fries and a tattered blue bathrobe.
I love you in pajamas and sore muscles with beer on my tongue and your beard against my neck.
I love you darlin’ in bourbon-laced strips of cane and trickles of trochee.
I love you with the ease of a blade slicing satin, dripping it onto concrete.
I love you in the mounting hilarity of texts flung into my vortex of phlegm and despair.
I love you with the patience of a moment that may never see this branch of our tree but in the calm of laughter and golden spirals of touched heads.
I love you in Medusa-curls that warm the stone of my fingers and slide across my purring flesh.
I love you because we know how to make the Giants score, but they don’t get chocolate.
I love you in downy heads and skinned knees.
I love you in tracks of dirt and doors left ajar.
I love you in paralyzing waves of laughter that roll across undulating sheets.
I love you as the world’s problems linger in the dregs of an endless bottle of wine.
I love you in strokes of charcoal and dabs of paint made flesh.
I love you in a cepahlopodic tangle of limbs and noodles in the jet-lagged no-time.
I love you in a last sip of port and awkward farewell.
I love you in the spinning battle between cuffs and bolt.
I love you in bubbles of beer on a dappled patio.
I love you in vast, feral skies lingering in half-hooded lids.
I love you in shifting curves that out-run radar.
I love you in ripples dancing in the lights on a river.
I love you in cobblestones that catch our legs as we walk.
I love you in the stillness of my own bed and the silent intimacy of space.