Holding Court with Love and Lust

If Love is that boy you catch a glance of out of the corner of your eye,
sexy in a non-obtrusive way, exchanging casual glances pregnant with underlying emotion,
sitting in the back of the coffee shop
 
If Love is that boy,
 leafing through a novel,
a being of your world, and yet not at the same time,
you watch, but you do not approach.
You notice the subtle furrow of his brow as he
contemplates his journal,
puzzles through a problem, a phrase, a thought,
and you realize
he is exactly what you want.
 
But Love is not so easily approached.
 
If Love is that
beautiful, brooding boy
encased in his own world in the coffee shop,
then lust is his hedonistic cousin.
 
Lust is everywhere.
 
You run into him at the gym,
on the way home from work,
on trips -
and each time, he is equally as enticing as your first encounter.
 
Lust slides a slow smile in your direction,
and your body responds.
Lust has a way of breathing you in like oxygen,
of making you forget all the things on your internal to do list.
 
When Lust is around, only lust exists.
 
Lust is uncomplicated.
 
He is simple to deal with, easy to approach.
You throw a swagger into your walk, a switch to your hips, and he is there.
A kinetic heat rises between you.
 
If Lust is Love's cousin with his quick smile and frat-boy tendencies, then
he is well versed in polygamy. Attuned to the needs of those who want him,
Lust always responds to your call
at once laying you on your back as he tries to love you sideways.
Lust's interactions are transpicuous: speak and you shall receive.
 
You part your lips, and Lust is there
snaking his tongue, clouding your mind with the heavy scent of his aphrodisiac,
intoxicating and overwhelming your senses.
Lust induces a sweet amnesia, and the image of Love's thoughtfully furrowed brow fades
as you press yourself closer to Lust, filling yourself with carnal satisfaction.
 
But.
 
And there is always a but.
 
But.
 
Lust always fades, evaporating like water vapor with the breaking dawn. 
Memories linger on damp sheets,
traces of spent pleasure
and the lingering scent of cigarette smoke
and alcohol soaked pheromones.
Bruised lips and exhausted limbs push off from the mattress
and you face yourself in the early morning light.
 
Lust is gone, temporarily sated.
He is gone, but you feel no sense of loss -
Lust's absence is temporary, and he will always return to play.
 
The shade of longing you feel is different.
The dull ache within your soul is pulled into the light, examined with slight pangs of
loneliness, of want, of desire - but of a separate kind.
 
Lust has no domain here, and his winking eyes have no secrets to reveal.
 
You sit in the coffee shop and see Love yet again.
He sits, toying with a pen, thinking and brooding, once again,
removed from this reality.
 
Love remains elusive.
 
Perhaps it would be cruel to shatter his concentration. The idea of approach suddenly seems ridiculous.
 
How does one approach love?
 
Perhaps,
just perhaps,
the hesitation comes from the stirrings of memory.
 
 
Maybe you've flirted with love before,
sat down for tea, spun a web of intriguing conversation,
and held a private court with both love and lust on multiple nights.
 
But Love is complex - he is not wooed so easily.
 
Love pushes you away, one day showering you with praise,
and the next cruelly shoving you aside.
 
Conversations with love are similar to scaling jagged crags of uncertainty, punctuated with awkward sentences, and perilous verbal missteps.
 
Love also vanishes, for
days, weeks, months,
and leaves no evidence to his presence aside from blurry mental images and
recycled fragments of conversation,
played over and over to grasp tiny remnants of an experienced emotion.
 
Love arrives unbidden,
surprising you from behind and crossing over your vulnerabilities.
Love always knows just the right way to invade your senses,
and where Lust provides intoxication, Love's chemical cocktail marries itself to your breath,
to your bloodstream, to your bone marrow.
Love leaves his imprint on you and you acknowledge this and gasp for more.
 
More skilled than his cousin,
Love finds a way into every once of you, every pore,
regardless of how hard you plea with him not to.
 
You've been down this road before, and would prefer that Love not enter.
 
And yet, he does,
breaking past your defenses and assailing the towers you built
with the bricks of experience and self-preservation. 
Love persists, unrelenting, and it is at once welcome and unwelcome.
 
 Love assails your towers and you allow him to enter,
and as he enters, he snuffs the life from your candles of logic,
allowing you a sweet and full submission in his benevolent darkness.
 
Love lingers. And then love is gone.
 
Be it for a minute or for a moment, Love is gone,
the defilement complete,
adding yet another scar to your raped and battered soul.
 
Lust returns to you, and tries to apply a salve,
to act as a balm to help heal the viciously inflicted wounds dealt by Love.
 Lust tries, tries all he can, but he is not Love.
He is a distant relation, a distant shadow of Love,
working clumsily with Love's tools as he tries to forge a rough copy of Love's masterwork. 
 
Love is gone. Lust remains.
 
Now that Love has departed, Lust still remains, and while Love's tools are where he lay them,
they have not taken to the new craftsman.
Crude fumblings where there once was finesse,
lust tries, tries to imitate love,
but fails.
 
Lust is a poor mimic, and Love is cruel in his perfection.
 
 Love is gone. Lust remains.
 
So you resume the act of living, pulling together fragments of yourself
and return to life after self-imposed exile. You and Lust clasp hands and enter into an uneasy embrace. 
You both wait for Love's eventual return.
You wait to experience the spark of connection,
for you and Love and Lust to hold court again,
and create the type of night that seems to stretch into eternity.
 
Lust will wait.
Lust is always off in the wings, always ready to give whatever he can provide.
Lust understands implicitly that he will always be the understudy.
 
For Love, in all his mercurial glory, always manages to return to center stage.
 
And you wait, with baited breath, for love to resume his place on your stage,
so that your story can continue.
 
You will wait.
 
 
 
 
L. Peterson, 2006