Birds do it.
Bees do it.
Transatlantic thieves do it.
Let’s do it.
Let’s fall in love.
When two people fall in love, they grab at one another’s flesh and write poems about each other’s eyes.
They each go out into the wild and find their favorite animal, and then they lock those two animals in a wooden crate together and see what happens. The song that gets written about it is the song of their relationship.
Vows are exchanged and treaties forged. They each start off wearing a full suit of platemail, holding armloads of axes and pikes and nunchucks and ninja throwing stars, but they figure out that they can’t get close to each other with all that stuff, so bit by bit they start laying down pieces of artillery, keeping their eyes locked on each other at all times.
One false move by either party and all armaments get taken back up again, and they stare at each other intensely through the notches of their crossbows.
Most couples spend their whole lives doing this without ever truly touching. Hardly anyone gets naked.
Bards do it.
Beards do it.
Screaming childhood fears do it.
Let’s do it.
Let’s fall in love.
Loving another person is easy so long as they love you back, and so long as they do everything you want them to do all the time, and so long as nothing unexpected ever happens, and so long as death isn’t a thing.
Other than that though, loving another person is really scary. You don’t know what’s going to happen; you could take off all your armor and let him all the way in, and at the last minute he could be all “Hmm, I bet I could sell her kidneys on the black market for a pretty penny.” You never know. Or maybe he has sharp teeth underneath his regular ones, who knows? That’s just a risk you’re taking.
Or maybe one day you’ll wake up and they won’t be there. You’ll look over at the dent in their pillow and there’ll be a note there saying “I’ve just decided I need to be somewhere else with someone else, P.S. Sorry I dented the pillow.”
Maybe you’re like a really good juggler, and they think that’s awesome and that’s what they fall in love with. But then maybe later they’re like, “You know, I think unicycle riders are more my thing.” And maybe you’d be like, “Hey I could ride a unicycle. Just because I’ve always been this juggler kind of person doesn’t mean I can’t learn how to do that one-wheeled impossible thing,” but they’ll probably be like, “Yeah but that other person over there’s already really good at it, plus they’ve already got their own unicycle.”
And you’ll have to take your balls and chainsaws and go cry.
Ghosts do it.
Gods do it.
Horny arthropods do it.
Let’s do it.
Let’s fall in love.
It’s totally worth it though. Totally.
Because if you don’t let someone all the way in and see you, no one will ever love all that cool stuff in you that nobody else knows about. Everyone else just sees the stuff that’s visible when they pass you in the hall, and they’re like “Oh that’s Joe, he’s got sideburns and he laughs too much,” or whatever your things are, and then you die and they’ll just be like “Oh well, two less sideburns.”
But if you let someone in who really really wants to know you, they’ll keep pushing in and finding stuff about you to love that you didn’t even know was there.
They’ll be like “What’s that there?” and you’ll be all “Oh that’s my reluctance to talk to anyone who knew me when I was a kid, that’s something I have apparently.” And they’ll say, “I love that about you.”
And then you’ve got to love that about you too, because they were so sweet about it and you don’t want to be mean to something they love.
So don’t be afraid to love. No, wait, that’s wrong.
Be afraid to love, because if you’re not afraid then you’re trying to do love while still wearing your suit of armor.
Be afraid but do it anyway, because you’re beautiful, and you deserve to have someone see that about you and appreciate it.
Let the song of your animals guide your strange dance as you throw off bits of armor and clothing with the exhilarating terror of no guarantee that they’ll like what they see.
And keep going for as long as the music lasts; you’re both bottomless so you’ll never run out of beautiful things to find.
I promise you: you’re so much more beautiful than you think you are.
And I repeat: you are so much more beautiful than you think you are.
And you don’t have to slip away unseen.
Gals do it.
Guys do it.
Poems about eyes do it.
Let’s do it.
Let’s fall in love.
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Thanks for reading! This is the text and some early sketches for what will become part of a new book with color illustrations. Stay tuned! Subscribe to my mailing list to stay up to date on my publications, and check out my other book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.
Oh. What a wonderful experience. The interweaving of story with pictures -- the way you did it, the simple language, the way the illustrations fleshed out the story -- took me back to childhood. (And that's a long trip.) Took me back to innocence.
And then it seemed like you were speaking directly to me.
I recognized Tim in your illustrations -- you do him very well. The ones of you were a little more vague.
I hope the ending is a long, long way in the future.
Thank you for this, Caitlin.
Your work reminded me long and dense, flourishing poem written years ago by eminent Polish poet and translator Witold Wirpsza. It was titled "Faeton". I wish you could find its English translation somewhere.
Exquisite and Beautiful CJ, thank you very much 💚