Liebe
Scroll
The Poem
Liebe
This is what love looks like when it has had enough:a wave.
Not the gentle kind —the kind you hear before you see,that rearranges everything it touchesand does not apologizeand does not ask if this is a good time.
I am the woman at the center.Eyes closed.Dreaming it into existencethe way you dream the thingsthat cannot wait any longer to be real —not hopefully, not carefully —with the complete focused will of someonewho knows exactly what this costsand is paying it anyway.
The woman at the center
Jefferson watchesfrom the right side of historyand the wrong side of everything else.He wrote the instructions.He watched what happened to them.He is still here, still watching,smoking his pipe in front of the blood moon —because the instructions were always trueand the distance between the principle and the practicehas always been exactly this wideand exactly this the work.
The stuffed animals are exhausted.Snoopy. Bugs. The bear. The cat.They have been carried by every wave,deposited on every shore,picked up again by the next childwho needed something to holdwhile the adults sorted outwhat the adults were supposed to be sorting out.They are tired in the specific way love gets tired —not done. Never done. Just tired.Which is what Liebe meanswhen you translate it all the way down to the bone.
The Teletubbies are on top of the wave.Joy belongs at the crest of the serious things.The absurd belongs at the top of the necessary things.Somewhere between the gravity and the Teletubbiesis where the wave gets strong enough to matter.
Captain America is screaming.Someone has to.
The red elephant moves through the frame —decorated, ceremonial, enormous —the performance of powerthat requires this much ornamentationto convince itselfit is not afraid of what is coming.It is coming.
The neon burns its one true word above all of itin the language that makes you feel itbefore you know what it means —Liebe.
Liebe
Love that became a wave.Love that carried the exhausted animalsand the screaming heroand Jeffersonand the Teletubbiesand the woman at the centerwith her eyes closedand her whole self pointed forward —the only force that has ever rearrangedanything worth rearranging.
She is making it come.
The wave is coming.