What Do You Lose?

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For a pen to write words, it must lose its ink.

For a knife to cut bone, it must lose its edge.

For a light to be bright, it must lose its life.

For a bird to fly high, it must lose its nest.

For a person to love, what must they lose?

Have you ever been in love before? How do you know?

Love is instinctual. Love is eternal. Love is the soft, richly red petals of roses. Love is the stems which feed it nutrients. Love is the thorns which protect it. Love is the air the water the ground. Love is the past the present the future. Love is the moment the instant the eternity. 

How would you describe the colour green if you didn’t know the word for it? 

Somewhere between the colours blue and yellow. It’s fresh, it’s bright, it’s spring. It’s the grass, it’s the leaves. It’s the way you feel smelling a mowed lawn. It’s the way you feel buried in the depths of a rainforest. It’s in the silvery eucalyptus and the wings of rainbow lorikeets.

How would you describe the colour green if you can’t see it?

Maybe you’d copy what I wrote before. But you wouldn’t understand it, would you? 

Much less ever see it yourself?

And you can go look at leaves, go touch some grass. You can play with tennis balls and watch them bounce. And people will tell you, all of these things are green. And you can learn, that all of these things are green. You can memorise a list of everything in the world that is green or that should be green. But if you can’t see green, will you ever understand it? Will you ever be able to tell me, this is green?

But if it’s not green, what is it? How can you not see the colour green? You can see all the other colours fine. What’s wrong with green? I’ve already told you what green is. Why don’t you see it? Why don’t you understand? What do you see instead? Will you ever see green? How can we start showing you what green is? Will you ever realise the meaning of it? How essential it is?

How do you explain that everyone else can see green but even if the colour is there, it simply doesn’t exist?

And so how would you describe love if it doesn’t exist?

Love is the way two people look at each other. Love is the dilation of pupils, the lowering of voices. Love is a soft laugh, a gentle touch, a certainty and a feeling. 

Or maybe love is inside jokes, love is shared interests, love is warmth and belonging. 

But how do you know? How can you ever know? How do you feel it? How do you learn it?

I learnt how to be interesting. I learnt how to be expressive. I learnt how to talk to people. I learnt how to socialise, how to fit in. I studied and studied and studied and now I’ve learnt it. 

But how do you learn something so theoretical? You can’t practice love. You can go through the motions. You can tick all the requirements. You can tick all the checkpoints. You can tick all the expectations. 

But if you don’t feel it, you can’t.

And if you don’t feel it, will you ever?

And if you don’t feel it, is that your fault?

And if you don’t feel it, is that wrong?

But you don’t feel it.

You can’t.

For a person to love, what do they lose?

I thought I was incapable of it. I thought it was foreign, it was barred. Love had an umbrella and I was spring rain. Love had shoes and I was pavement. Love had a fence and I was a stray cat. 

But it turns out love had all of these things. Love had an umbrella, love had shoes, love had a fence and love had a formerly stray cat. Love showed me that spring rain must come for grass to be green. Love took me on afternoon walks and showed that fences were to protect, not to deny. As Love’s stray cat curled up between us, Love showed that everything I knew of myself was wrong. 

For a person to love, they lose themselves.