Love

Amelia says that love is like an old Dominican couch, still wrapped in plastic, being pushed off a thirty-three story project building and waiting at the bottom with buoyancy to catch it. Patricia says love is like a ballerina, showing off how many times she can twirl on a stage and then falling flat on her ass. Every one falls she tells me. But Paola says it’s not like that at all. It’s like a pair of jeans that you wear so often, its starts to rip between your inner thighs. You can sew them back, but they will never be the same. My grandfather had a closet full of canvases and oil paint. He was a painter once. Every family member owned one of his paintings. He walked around with paint brushes at the tip of his fingers. Didn’t use them. Just sort of stroked everything he walked passed. He was good at this, finding detours from the kitchen to the bedroom, avoiding the closet. This is how it is with me. Love I mean.