Lack
Everything is exaggerated at first. We throw prediction to the wind. We say things we won’t always mean. We say things without counting on the memory of the listener. We forget our own limits, our capacity to injure and be injured. We see only our reflections. And images cannot love images. They can only bounce around inside skulls, turning hope tedious.
We don’t fall in love with a person; we fall in love with parts of them–the parts that we ourselves have or want. We don’t fall out of love with a person; we fall out of love with too many of their parts–the parts we want to smother in ourselves. The people we love are breathing, blinking reminders of what we hate about ourselves. We break each other’s hearts because we want to forget.
Desire must always meet with opposition. There has to be something to lack. We wouldn’t know what to do with everything we’ve ever wanted. We can’t stand to be loved more than we are able to love ourselves. There has to be something to lack.
