Love Is A Shambling Thing. It Shambles Out Of Her Home.

Love is a shambling thing, gray-faced and gasping.

It moves in from the west, the setting sun behind it. Those who see it avert their eyes.

Love stumbles and shutters, Love grasps but is not grasped. It sees a man, and the man does not look away.

Love reaches out a gray hand.

The man touches the hand just lightly, just on the palm, and the man feels heat inside of him. His heart is on fire.

This is not a metaphor.

His heart is on fire and so, soon, is his skin, his hair, his teeth become more and more visible as his face shrinks and melts away.

Love watches dispassionately. Love does not love what it does, Love only does it. Love does not have eyes and neither, now, does the man.

Love is a shambling thing.

It climbs through a window into an infant’s bedroom.

When one of the mothers comes in to check on her baby son, there is love, too, in the crib, curled up inside him.

Love murmurs, and the baby spits restlessly. The baby does not burn, the baby will eventually burn, but by then he will not be a baby.

The woman looks down at the ghastly form of Love curled up beside her son and she thinks, “What have I done?” She cries, not because she is happy or sad, but because that is what her body needs to do next.

Love rises from the crib and passes her without a glance.

Love is a shambling thing. It shambles out of her home.

Love, with skin that peels and pops and joints that moan and snap, climbs to the top of a tall building and surveys its surroundings. So many people.

It opens its mouth. Its teeth are the only part of its body that look new and healthy.

It has so many teeth...

It yelps and howls, an inarticulate sermon of lost and loss, and everyone hears it. They hear it as a shudder in their stomach and hitch in their step.

Love does not eat or drink, love separates its many teeth and consumes.

Love is a shambling thing, grey-faced and gasping.

It moves out to the east, the night drawing closed behind it. Those who see it avert their eyes.