The Weight of Love

A Story by Alchemist

Another scene in an impossible love story.

The Weight of Love

Driving. Always it seemed to him that he was driving. An old car, nothing special about it other then its reliability. He cares as little for the style of his vehicle as he does his own appearance. The automobile is clean and well maintained, like him, but just very common to look upon. Like him. But unlike before, he now travels in silence. At least externally. Inside him there is much activity, the sounds of hammer and chisel, the cutting and shaping of stone. The rebuilding of a holy place that had lain in ruin for years. Strong walls that would be held in place by the mortar of his written word. Never again would it be desecrated by his ignorance or slumber. These ruins had been excavated down to their foundations, and now he is rebuilding something even grander than before.

He had passed through the town of his birth that day. There in the center of town was the burned out husk of a store. When he had been fourteen, he had worked at the place. A grocery store. He would go there straight after his day of school was complete. He was required to accommodate the customers. To serve them. Carry bags for them. Fetch back room stock for them. Slice meat for them. Replenish the shelves for them. He excelled. For other people were easy to see. Easy to appease.

It was his own self that would confound him again and again in those days of his youth.

And her, he thought, just then. She would confound him at times.

Now the old building has been blasphemed by fire and he feels sadness for a time. A small town that had, since he had been alive anyway, always hovered around two thousand souls. This was home. But how he had tested the bars of the cage even then. Prowling back and forth through the streets looking for ....did he even know what he had been searching for then? He has loved this place, and does still, and love is a burden that is worth carrying. The stories he has in his heart. This is where they had their beginning.

Just then he remembers something she had said to him. “...I know God is everywhere where love is. The stronger and more pure love is the closer God comes.'' He is grasping that very possibility. For was it not written, “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I shall be in their midst.” He knows that God is love. The very name of God is love. When selfless love between two or more happens, there God is. Who would argue with her logic? Who could? Selfless love. Love with no expectation. Not a false, hollow concept of love, but the love of one another in the context of being willing to lay down their own life for that of the other. Love is more of a verb than a noun to be sure, he thinks. Not a word to be said as much as it is to be lived out. To serve?

He drives on and continues with his day, and even though the sun was hidden from him behind clouds fat with snow, he smiles and the hammer and chisel still clang in his ever brightening mind.

In the brief space between this sentence and the last, three hours have passed in his life. But they were not lost to him forever, for he was ever building. Serving. Loving. Without expectation.

But now he is here, through the gardens, across the grasses and at the edge of the trees. They are solemn in their role as protectors of the lands and of the peace that resides upon it. As to what lay beyond those trees had never entered his mind. Here in this place he had all he would ever need, and what he needed was clarity of thought. He looked down the valley to the house, gardens as thick and vibrant as a jungle enveloping it. Everywhere was movement and life! Birds and beasts of the fields all in syncopation with the ever growing harmony that was this place.

He sees the bedroom window through the myriad greens of the herb gardens. He thinks to the day before she left. He had held her all day and they had shared many things with one another. She had asked him to “dream with her,” and he had. So deeply had they made love to each other using only their words, that she had convinced herself they, at some point, had become one flesh. But they had not.

He may tell her of this at some point, but maybe not he thinks, as a crooked grin slowly erupts from his face.

For love is a burden that is worth carrying. Omnia mea mecum porto.