I sat down next to "Love" in an airport bar. I found it annoying when she leaned across me to plug in her phone, but I held my tongue. It is always best to hold your tongue when you meet someone in an airport. I mean they could be anyone, right? And besides, the banter is always the same. “Where are you going? Where have you been? Oh, I love it there! Did you go by the Park/Museum/Cathedral?” When she leaned in I noticed that she smelled of the same coconut, hotel shampoo that I had used that very morning. A crazy coincidence, huh? That "Love" would stay at the airport Hyatt Regency?

But of course, I did not know she was "Love" at the time. I mean, you seldom do know right away, do you? For God’s sake, who would guess that it was "Love" drinking a tall, amber ale sporting a perfect, television-commercial-worthy, frothing head at 7:10 am? Of course, that should have been my sign that this was indeed “Love,” but I am not that smart. It only made me thirsty.

I asked the bartender, a dark-haired, thick bodied, Mediterranean woman with an alluring birthmark between her cheek and lip, for one of whatever it was “Love” was drinking. Of course, I didn’t say “Love.” At least I don’t remember saying it, but it was early, and “Love” was attractive in a 1977 Sally Field kind of way, so I might have said “Love” unintentionally. She turned to face me when I ordered my beer, raising the possibility even higher that she could be “Love,” as her roundish, cutesy face now wore the most curious make-up; a Jokeresque smile painted in blondish foam across its upper lip. I even began to hope and suspect at that point that she might be “Love.” In fact it occurred to me that I should ask for her autograph, and possibly even her number, as neither my mother, nor my buddies back home would ever believe that I had found “Love,” or that I could have ensured the ability to find her again.

As will happen in an airport she drank her beer quickly, and I mine. She leaned across me again to retrieve her phone. This time I didn’t find it nearly so annoying when she leaned over me, as her free hand accidentally laid itself across the top of mine. I noticed that the hand didn’t wear a ring. “Excuse me,” she stated matter-of-factly. It was only airport curtesy, not the real thing, but I didn’t mind.

“Love” picked up her bags and started away, but then she stopped. She turned completely around to face me, a dejected look on that sweet face. “I had hoped you would at least say hello!” Then she disappeared into the moving river of bodies headed toward the “C” gates.

"Love" did not speak to me that day in the airport bar, only a beautiful woman, a stranger. She did not say what “Love” should have said, what “Love” could have said... not if she had wanted more from me, that is. I know that sometimes “Love” is over-rated and, in any event, I was unprepared for “Love” at that time in my life. I would move on fine without her. But on the plane ride home I remembered her frothy smile and her soft touch, and I wondered that “Love” had only wanted a little small talk from a stranger, only a “hello”. The memory of it sat heavy on my heart. Outside my window was the blue sky, and it made a blue flight all of the way home, a very blue flight knowing that the same blue sky carried “Love” toward someone else, someone somewhere who might simply say, “hello”.

I wish someone could tell me to let go. Sit me down and say, "It is not your job to put every persons burden on your shoulders. Relax, enjoy being a kid. Stop trying to make everyone happy, because you are forgetting about your own happiness. It's okay to focus on yourself, that doesn't make you self-centered. Most importantly, stop forgiving people who don't deserve it. You are too trusting and you let so many people who have hurt you back into your life, and then you act hurt all over again when they betray you. Not every person deserves a second chance, and that's okay." I think that would make a world of difference in my life. But I can't rely on someone else to tell me that, I have to change these things on my own. And that's exactly what I'm trying to do.

Dear young one,

One day you will see me, but for now I must hide. My deceiving counter-part, infatuation, will take my place in anyone you think is “the one”, but of course, they won’t be. You will eventually find me in someone. I will be shy at first but then you will see me in my full form, and you will never want to let me go. But one day the soul I have attatched to, will dispose of me, and something dangerous will take my place; Lust. Oh how much they will hurt you. They will force you to do things because you will still think you see my shadow on that young one’s soul; you will mistake lust for me, you will get hurt and you will think I have abandoned you forever. But do not fret my dear child, you will find me again, and I will never let anything bad happen to you. For the soul you will find me attatched to will never hurt you, will never make you feel alone, and will transfer a part of me to your children. Yes, your children; the love you two will share will apprear in its purest form on your childrens’ souls. You will find me Young One, and I will never hurt you; if you get hurt by a soul, it is not me inflicting the pain. Do not worry, I will see you soon enough, even if you do not see me.

I love you,

Love

Tell me all the ways

You see my beauty,

My worth.

Show me all the ways

You burn for me

And our love.

Act in all the ways

You care for me,

Our families.

Build a life in all the ways

Your heart commands

And share the world.

With me.

I would like for love to come up and place hands on my waist, breathing warmth on the nape of my neck. Whispers I can't understand, but I can sure feel inside my ventricles coursing through my small hairs that are erect on the same place the warmth meets. I then realize love is not a voice it's an invisible force that needs to be brought out that can be brought out that will be brought out that will seep out from every orifice of the thing that keeps you from spilling everywhere. Love is a secret you can only show. Love let me hear with my skin.

In the hospital my wife gave birth to what looked like a lizard.

Once peering upon this gooey mass, the love, I felt straight to my gizzard.

As the child was crying out on his first moments of life

I found a new respect for my wife.

To see the beginning of creation and the innocence.

Gave me a whole new purpose and sense.

Fragile and dependent the child was.

And at that moment I vowed he would be my cause.

I’m so grateful to God and to all that is good.

That’s the way humans are apt to see it and should.

The day my son was born I will carry to the grave.

The miracle, the beauty. the innocence and the child so brave.

No more shall I think of selfish things.

For the experience and lessons of what my child brings.

I love this child till eternity no matter what road he takes.

For this child has kept me forever awake.

He was my rainbow, because of him my future was bright. I could actually love myself for me because he showed me how. My heart was weak whenever he wasn't with me, I just loved his presence, the way he moved, smiled and smell. He was well put package sent to me from gods. I could imagine him say all those sweet nothings in my ear, but words that he would always say to me were simply "my love".

#love

She is quiet, about five-foot-seven, detached, genuine, and especially polite. She lives with her dad in Endwell, or with her mom in the trailer park.

This is how Mallory thinks of herself. Warily the girl with the blond hair sits upon the sofa; carefully the girl with the glasses considers the few numbers in her phone. Whether she can trust Sarah. If Marcus has changed. For every error in judgement upsets everyone, and every lapse in reason wreaks havoc with everything for days. No antidepressants, no painkillers, no pot, no beer, no liquor, no cigarettes, nothing that truly excites, revives, or rests her. Only the Internet and a little anonymous conversation, voices without inflection, asexual, in acronyms with their melted meanings she speaks (as a girl speaks who for years has been beaten and abused sexually and believes suddenly that she has found someone she can trust).

Down the hall into the little, narrow, sparsely furnished bedroom, where drawings, sketches, etchings, and water colors are piled upon her dresser, her desk. The bed made, a sheet covering the window, over in a corner folded neatly upon a chair her cheerleading uniform, and beneath the chair her white tennis sneakers, one sneaker set beside the other, the toes smudged with dirt. Beside the door is her backpack.

Otherwise only the artwork, and beneath her bed the tubes and the bottles and the containers and the sprays and the sandwich bags which she uses against the headaches; against the swirling nausea; against cramps in her abdomen; against the nosebleeds; against it all. A terrifying arsenal of aerosol and cement, yet the only assistance against the ringing silence of this empty room in which she never rests. In boxer shorts and a t-shirt, her face flushed, her glasses pressed close to the paper, with one leg pulled beneath her carefully she draws, she draws what she has drawn before: Waves. Giant, fantastic waves her tired eyes can scarcely admire. For hours she sits like this and draws as her eyes burn.

This is the framework; this doesn't change. But her drawings reveal another dimension, for at times they are beautiful and mysterious. Yet the clue to her drawings is that they come from the mind of a very unhappy girl. Often they are really less drawings than manic manifestations of the conversations she holds with herself. Now a yet yawning gulf, now a sullen white surf beat against its sides so violently that sequelae is not too severe a conclusion for - me - her counselors to draw, and yet the feeling of her own inadequacy, evident even in her earliest work, is unclear even to those who wish to see. Convinced that those surrounding her have no idea who she is, and invariably acceptant of her hateful and misguided peers, she feels often and acutely the hurt that those who should understand her know her no better than casual acquaintances. People she might pass on the street.

Mallory is not remarkable, nor is she especially noticed. Like a second Andrea Yates, she is given a stare at once vacant and wild, as if opening upon some frightful and unknown dimension, and unwittingly the image conjured is that of the single mother, the pregnant teen walking full term down the hallway, her belly making full the wide expanse of her red hooded sweatshirt. It is thus that her teachers feel no choice but to portray her, a modern-day martyr, a Pandora exposed, hoping thereby to subject this quiet child to no more scrutiny than necessary from children absent from faith, devoid of religion, who, disturbed by years of television and endless hours of Internet, are incapable of perceiving pathos unless it is produced and packaged as a show, a commercial, something to be consumed.

But sadness is not subjective. The true likeness of Mallory is not as simple anyone would have us believe.