Today’s been a lot like a pregnant and laboring octopus– an eight-legged creature full of thousands of different lives that kept bursting into existence all at once. It contained multitudes, and time and direction seemed even less real than normal, and so here we are. It’s 11pm ish and I haven’t written anything or even tried.

The majority of votes on my blog poll last week said you wanted me to write more about love, and since I have no ideas in my head, but I always have armfuls of that, here we are.

But instead of generic love, or internal love, or found love, which have all been recent topics, I think today I will tell you about a specific love, a two-year old love, a still blooming love. Today I will tell you about my boyfriend, but I will set a timer so it will not have a catchy ending. It will be like this day. Long tentacled with life in all directions.

My boyfriend meets words like a deep sea diver, choosing to sink deep into the unknowns with wide-eyed fascination, time and time again. Every word is a treasure to him, even the ones that have terrifying long legs and sharp teeth. Especially those. He wants to know where everything began, words and ideas and people, and he follows their path like journeys are a blessing to whoever can listen well enough to hear every footstep.

My boyfriend can listen well. He is generous with this, and with everything else he has. He fills my shelves with crackers and jams and brand new books because he cannot give me the word comfort, but he give me pantries that know what it looks like for when I forget.

I forget everything often but my boyfriend remembers everything always, and though all that remembering must be heavy, he juggles it.

My boyfriend juggles. He’s silly, you see.

He peeks in the drawers of the hospital when the doctor is gone, and dances when no reasonable person would, or should, and can pun his way through any situation. And when I give in to this absurdity, he smiles like my rusty giggles are the best thing he’s ever witnessed in all his explorations of life, which can’t be true, but is a beautiful thought.

My boyfriend is beautiful, dresses beautifully, and I hardly ever see a color anymore without thinking of how he would know how to treat it well when so many of us would just pass it by.

Like me, he is pained by the abyss where there could be justice. Like me, he is renewed by the miracle of an especially tiny strawberry.

From him, I am learning how to handle the reality of these two extremes on one tiny planet.

I am learning to tie a string from one to the other, and listen to the full story and full glory. I am remembering how to fill blank spaces with miracles.

My boyfriend praises every miracle, even the smallest ones, even the slowest ones. My boyfriend is patient.

My boyfriend praises every joy– every perfect pretzel, every day– and he praises with a straight face like he is a Very Serious Person but I know he is not, which is to say that my boyfriend understands that joy is a Very Serious Thing.

Like me, he loves the rust of things as much as the glint, loves the sand as much as the pearl, loves the cave as much as the coral.

My boyfriend, blessedly, loves.

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