The Definition of Love

love.

At such a young age, how can one possibly describe love to its greatest extent, unless I were to lie about it? The 'love' I am exposed to shows itself in many different ways; the love of my mother as she sets breakfast down on the table in the morning, the love of my father as he drives me to school, the love of my brother when he gives me a pat on the head, and even the love of my teachers as they tell me where I went wrong. If I am absorbing all this love, how could it possibly be that I do not feel it myself? Therefore, through the assumption that I must feel the kind of love that people do talk about, the kind that you would die for, I will produce my best description of the love I feel when the emotion comes to mind. 

The smell of grass and sunshine waft through my nose and I am laying wide-eyed in the bright summer day. The wind is blowing through my hair, and it carries the light dandelion seeds that haven't had a chance to be wished on. My hands grace over the skin I was given, lightly brushing my fingertips along the surface. The sun feels warm against my cheeks, and I can feel my heart beating, the blood pulsing through to my fingertips. It helps, I think, to feel the prickly grass under my bare feet, to feel the grains of dirt make its way through my toes. I am singing to the sky, my voice in symphony with the birds. 

I stretch my hands out to the sky to touch the clouds, but my body pulls me back. My arms draw back to my sides, where they were situated, and my body hugs me tight. Its bones vibrate with my spirit that so longed to leave just a second ago, now trapped within a shell it never knew it had. The wind blows against my cheek once more. My cheek is my body's. My spirit feels the wind against its cheek. My spirit feels the sun against its skin. My spirit feels the grass against its feet. My spirit feels.

The vessel that traps me sings symphonies too. It thrums a beat with the pulse of the heart, it feels the wind with the smooth of the cheek, it feels the prickly grass with the pad of the foot. It senses the spirit leaving and hugs me tight, and the bones echo with the spirit, and the imperfections start to shine, and the hair starts to grow. The eyes see what the body has given to me. Hands are pressed against my face, against my neck, against my body. This is my body, my heart, my bones, my blood, my flesh, my imperfections. It is a gift to feel so torn away, my spirit and my vessel, and to sew the two back together again. My blood rushes to my fingertips as my hands clench and I hug myself tight, the spirit and the vessel are one again. They are harmonious, every bump and every pore. Every hair that dared to be. Every bit of heat that flows through me to keep me living, to keep me loving. The tears my eyes shed when I am feeling sad, when my spirit cries, and my body cries too. 

I cannot dream of a world, my world, without this wholesome love I feel for the own flesh and bone I was given, for we are one being, my vessel and I. We are full of feeling and full of life. This is my definition of love.