For Nova and Sean

We hear that love is patient.  That it is kind, that it does not boast, that it is not proud.  We hear this, and we think of love as gentle.  As a cloud creature dispersing back into the sky without a whisper.
   
   But love is also fierce.  Love is a soldier.  Love takes into its arms all of the things you are proud of and all of the things you are not and love says to the world that it will fight for every square inch of it.  Love does not close its eyes to flaws, nor to weaknesses.  Love patches the holes.

Love is stubborn.  It is not interested in your reasons for not believing, because love is as real as the way you have memorized the flecks in each other's eyes.

  No greater a chameleon is anything but love, turning cool on hot days and waming when the air begins to sting.

And love, more than anything, is strength.  Some days, it is two hearts doing the work of a million and some days, it is two legs doing the work of four.

And love between two people- this wave, this search, this movement about which everything is written and sung, this hand holding, this dream sharing, this gift of two souls reading each other as if they had written all the words- that is the truest of all things.

The answer, and it is not simple, is that love is everything.  Love is the only beginning that promises no end.