LOVE WAS YOU
"Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.” Albert Einstein
Click to listen to Tom's song

Love was you, all comfortable and familiar.

It was the way you carried on conversation, your being aglow.
It was me knowing precisely who you enjoyed talking to.
It was understanding who would “get” you and who wouldn’t even try.

And how blessed those were who would let you in.

It was the way you sat in the driver’s seat, casual but in full command
body cocked toward the rushing wind, where you had to drive
with all the windows down and passed the dogged habit on to me.

It was the way you held your fork and pen and how your fingers worked
carefully with everything you touched. How you embraced me each night
and every morning until your failing arms could cradle me no more.

It was your clarity concerning solutions to problems, your unyielding
go-get-’em attitude under the weight of cars and roofs that had to be fixed
while deep down you knew your body couldn’t.

Love was decades of life pulling on your muscles and nerves,
but those fluorescent orbs never stopped smiling. It was your hair all Einstein
and Don King-like and your furry chest and arms that I stroked until your body died.

You once said, “What happens matters.” You happened. And it definitely mattered.
You were a beautiful part of my story, the only thing that we ever truly own.
Right now I love you more than the grief can erase.

Love was you, all original and fresh.

It was a mutual attraction that did not fade, a continual and complete place
that was adventurous and never awkward, where we always knew that we were loved
and always understood how beautiful we were.

Love was you. Who will now know that I am beautiful?


Anita Stienstra