Don’t call me Cupid. That’s tantamount to a slur.

 

Don’t call me “Love itself”. I’m only its quiet manifestation.

 

In your folklore, I have no name

 

Just an assigned sensation:

 

The little kick you feel when your heart latches onto another.

 

Maybe not Love.

 

I can be Love.

 

But more often than not,

 

I am simply a Connection.

 

They have a word for it in Urdu:

 

Dor.

 

A string

 

That ties two hearts, two destinies.

 

Now, what do you make of that?

 

. . .

 

him: say something

her: …

 

. . .

 

I have the worst job

 

In the world.

 

People hate me,

 

Want to rip me right out of their chests

 

Blame me for making them fall

 

For something that wasn’t real.

 

Ever spit at the mailman just because he brings you the bills?

 

Exactly.

 

People are unspeakably rude.

 

They’re the ones who tie the knots - and then untie them again.

 

I only exist. I’m only the string.

 

. . .

 

him: please

her: i’m not doing this right

 

. . .

 

What is Love?

 

Oh, I could write entire handbooks on this - entire dictionaries - entire songs.

 

What is Love?

 

I wish I could tell the person who takes these strings and flings them in every direction

 

Hoping they’ll land on just the right stranger.

 

What is Love?

 

I wish I could tell the woman whose husband hurts her,

 

Who cries till late at night because she’s not sure that barb-wire dor can be unthreaded.

 

What is Love?

 

I wish I could tell the Tumblr-heartbreak-quote-writer

 

The one who gets a 1.5K reblogs but still doesn’t understand what puzzle piece he’s missing.

 

I wish I could tell the stars.

 

Maybe then they’d spell it out in constellations.

 

I’m telling you now, though.

 

Tugging your heartstrings.

 

So listen.

 

. . .

 

him: is this still worth it?

her: absolutely

 

. . .

 

Because I love you.

 

In my line of work, I hear these words often.

 

The words that can either birth a whole universe

 

Or crush it slowly under its own weight.

 

Speak those words and you’re holding the string,

 

And a choice.

 

To play it like a violin?

 

Or to tighten it like a chain?

 

. . .

 

him: why?

her: because i love you

 

. . .

 

I’ve seen so many failures.

 

So many bits of shattered glass.

 

My resume isn’t that impressive.

 

I could make you the most beautiful mosaic

 

Of all the hearts that I’ve seen broken.

 

But I’ve seen successes.

 

Oh yes. I’ve seen them.

 

See, the secret to Love isn’t some miracle Quick Fix To All Problems

 

As much as it is a kaleidoscope of changes.

 

You change the way you react to crumbs on the floor and dishes in the sink.

 

You change the way you define flaw and instead use I’m not perfect either.

 

You change the way your universe orbits: not geocentric, but around a common sun.

 

You change you

 

To make room for we. For both ends

 

Of the dor.

 

And where you can’t change, you ask for just a little bend

 

In return.

 

But the point is, you try.

 

. . .

 

her: you’re smiling

him: i know

 

. . .

 

Maybe one day I’ll quit, and I’ll become a poet.

 

I have so much fodder to work with, I’ll have Shakespeare rolling in his grave.

 

I can write poems about a poet who was merely a dor

 

Who wrote about the Love and the beauty of adaptation.

 

And the first words of that poem will be the same as the ending.

 

They’ll be like a string that spans the worlds and back again

 

And comes back to tap you right along your heartbeats:

 

Because I love you.