Love

I was reading a book the other day and it instructed me to write about love. It didn't specify to write about how it feels or what it looks like, etc...It just said to write about love. So I thought I would.

Love is your yawn when you are exhausted from too little sleep and the way you stretch your arms simultaneously. This is love because you still have time to see your wife even though your eyes are drooping. Love is seeing the tears drip from your eyes on our wedding day. The way after we take our visitation picture you run your fingers through my hair at the risk of getting caught. Love is every song you ever tell me to listen to and the tears that run down my face when I actually get a chance to listen to them.

Love was how you bugged the CO's, even writing the warden to get a new jumpsuit for our wedding so you could look fresh for your wife. They gave you one so you would stop bugging them. Love is how you hold my hands in yours and trace your fingers around the edges of the decade old scars on my wrists. How when I walk to the vending machine you watch my every move and mouth "I love you" over and over again until I come back to our tiny table. Love is the pride you have in me.

 Love is understanding my weight loss struggle and tearing articles out of magazines and sending them to me on curbing your hunger, or how to not eat past a certain time.  Love is watching your face as you blow me a kiss from behind those bars as I walk out of the visiting room, knowing good and well there is a line of men standing right behind you probably judging your every move.

Love is knowing I am scared of everything on this journey and comforting me even though you are the one who probably needs way more comfort. Love is the tears that fall as I write this post knowing I can't say good morning to my husband as he rises. Love is the intricate web of your handwriting on paper, the words that make or break my day. Love is knowing that the intensity between us matches nothing I have ever experienced, but knowing that you cannot be my all or I will not survive. Love is fake eyelashes and curled hair. Straightening wrinkled clothes from car rides to look pretty for you.

Love is your inability to give up on me when I seem crazy and my inability to give up on you period. Your incarceration has and has not defined our love. Our love was strengthened within the bounds of your incarceration, but love was looking at you walking towards me for the first time ever that November day and knowing I was seeing love coming toward me.