InsaneJournal

voicesinmyhead prompt #3: What are your thoughts on love?
Love? Gren smiles slowly, as if drawing it up from somewhere deep within him, and runs a hand through his hair, trying to brush it back off his face. Few and far between, recently. You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?

He pulls a cigarette from a box in his pocket and lights it with a lighter, which he then sets on the table to give his hands something to fidget with, instead of putting it away. He inhales deeply and lets the smoke settle down into his lungs some before exhaling. The feeling of warmth slowly settles in him, of an addiction soothed, or partial suffocation. These things, he thinks, are what love is. But that wasn’t an appropriate answer for such a broad topic.

It’s a miraculous thing, really. And it’s a miracle when you can get it. But I’ve come to believe that it’s not as integral to the world as some people would have you believe. I’ve seen men live for years thinking there wasn’t a soul anywhere who cared for them. He shrugs away a shiver.

The weird thing about love is that it’s so easy to mistake other things for it. I didn’t have a bad childhood. My mother loved me and did what she could for me, so why then, is it so hard for me to recognize love when I see it now? Why do we, I, search for it in places where it doesn’t exist? It’s so hard to catch. I’ve thought I loved men before, only to realize that wasn’t truly it.

I’ve seen love on other people. Julia loved Spike. Vicious loved Julia. In his way anyway, before he hated her. Love suited Julia, made her more beautiful. Love was a gall on Vicious. It turned everything he touched to cinders. A scar on his thigh pulses and his throat constricts. He’s still not able to control these responses to thoughts of Vicious. My love is usually just misguided and clumsy.

A large clump of ash falls off his forgotten cigarette and he lapses into silence, watching the smoke. Maybe it was appropriate after all. I really thought it would be easier to answer that question. I’m sorry for rambling. I think, more succinctly, that love is like smoke. It’s addictive and dangerous and full of chemicals that make you think you’re ok, even when you’re not. And if you do find it, you can’t touch it. It slips through your fingers, away as quickly as it came. For that short time though, its elation and joy and beauty. It’s so beautiful, and I would let it burn me with it to catch it again, just once.