What Is Love?

When is it love? That strongest of bonds, so easy to recognize but so hard to define.

Is it that moment when you first realize you can't keep your mind away from her?

When, at your mental quietest, you find your thoughts racing? Not with plans, not running over what must be done tomorrow, or what is still left undone from today, but to her. Always to her. Memories of her voice, of her laughter. Of the way her hair falls across her face and shoulders.

When you can single out her voice in a room filled with noise, is it love yet? When you find yourself acting like a fool for just a glimpse of that smile capable of illuminating the darkest night, for just a moment of her laughter which can raise the deadest of spirits. Has it become love?

Has the transformation taken place when a chance encounter sends your heart racing like you'd just run a marathon? When an accidental touch scorches your soul like holy fire?

And what is love anyway?

Is it that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach at the sight of her?

Is it that oddly comforting knowledge that you would willingly sell your soul if it meant keeping her safe and happy?

Is it the sudden knowledge that you're changing? That long ingrained habits are dying way, being replaced with new ones, in an almost unconscious desire to please her?

The willingness to do, to dare, things you had never before attempted, simply because they're things she enjoys. Is that love?

Is it the ability to see her at her worst, when her world's falling apart, and have your heart break because there is nothing you can do to make it right?

Is it when you know what she's going to say before she can say it? When just a look is enough to tell what she's thinking, and there is no need for words, is that love?

Is love that place where anything is enjoyable so long as you're together?

 Is it that point where you look at her and sexual desire is tampered by the burning need to know everything about her? Where everything you know about her, every situation you've seen her in, at her best and worst, serves only to increase that desire?

When you look at your future and see only two versions, a future bright, filled with life and with her, and a future dark, lifeless and without her. Is that love?

What is love, anyway?