Name Of Love
Entry by: Sirona
9th February 2016
How can I name the love that I have for you?
It’s not that I lack the words, it’s just that I like to find the exact right one and when it comes to this, I just can’t.
Love. Love is such an overused word. I love that restaurant. Don’t you just love it when that happens? Love bombards us from greetings cards, film titles, song lyrics. Love makes the world go round.
If you say a word often enough it loses all meaning. Love has been cheapened; not the concept, just the word.
There are so many different kinds of love. Romantic, familial, the love we have for friends, for pets. How can one word possibly cover all those different things and what I feel for you?
How many different words do we have for…rain, for example? Storm, Drizzle, Cloudburst, Deluge, Cats and Dogs…but we work love so hard.
I know there are synonyms for love. I have inspected them all in my search for the perfect one to describe my feelings for you. They all have their own unique flavour, and not one of them is the taste of you. It’s not just affection, more than devotion, not mere infatuation.
It’s not romantic. Of course it isn’t. Romantic love made you, you began in a moment of passion when your father and I looked into each other’s eyes and realised that we wanted to combine at a cellular level.
The love I have for you is fierce and primal. It’s the love that appeared from nowhere the moment I first saw the little blue line on the pregnancy test. It’s the love that made me call your father and shakily ask him if I should go to work, there was love in his voice when he told me to wrap myself in cotton wool.
It was love of you that propelled me through the birthing of you, sweating and overwhelmed, my body working harder than it ever had to expel you from the centre of me and give you over to the world, to your life.
The whole of reality burst apart in the moment you took your first breath, realigning itself around the startling fact that you existed. You. The most wonderful creature that had ever entered the world.
It was love that got up in the night to cradle you, to feed you. Love wasn’t always patient, no matter what Paul may have written to the Corinthians. Sometimes, love cried tears of frustration, but love never faltered.
Love makes me fierce, it makes me roar like a dragon when anyone dares to mistreat you. Love makes me want to hold you close, to breathe in the scent of you, to admire every inch, to never let you go. Love makes me let you go, in spite of that.
Love has meant losing you, piecemeal, since that first last push that freed you from my womb. A thousand paper-cuts along the way to adulthood. I have loved a thousand versions of you, only found now in photographs and video clips, each one lost to be replaced with another. I grieve the memory of those versions of you, each perfect in their moment.
I can describe my love of you, but the word itself is unsuited to the feeling. To the hyperbolic certainty that if you should leave this world, the stars would fall and all would become darkness. I can spout clichés; I would kill for you, I would die for you, all of that, without hesitation.
I do many things in the name of love, but those four letters are just a place holder until I discover the precise word that can hold all the meaning that I pour into them. How can you ask one word to contain all the emotion that threatens at time to burst from inside of me, shattering me into sunlight?
You can’t. So, my darling child, until there is there are just three words I have for you.
I love you.
It’s not that I lack the words, it’s just that I like to find the exact right one and when it comes to this, I just can’t.
Love. Love is such an overused word. I love that restaurant. Don’t you just love it when that happens? Love bombards us from greetings cards, film titles, song lyrics. Love makes the world go round.
If you say a word often enough it loses all meaning. Love has been cheapened; not the concept, just the word.
There are so many different kinds of love. Romantic, familial, the love we have for friends, for pets. How can one word possibly cover all those different things and what I feel for you?
How many different words do we have for…rain, for example? Storm, Drizzle, Cloudburst, Deluge, Cats and Dogs…but we work love so hard.
I know there are synonyms for love. I have inspected them all in my search for the perfect one to describe my feelings for you. They all have their own unique flavour, and not one of them is the taste of you. It’s not just affection, more than devotion, not mere infatuation.
It’s not romantic. Of course it isn’t. Romantic love made you, you began in a moment of passion when your father and I looked into each other’s eyes and realised that we wanted to combine at a cellular level.
The love I have for you is fierce and primal. It’s the love that appeared from nowhere the moment I first saw the little blue line on the pregnancy test. It’s the love that made me call your father and shakily ask him if I should go to work, there was love in his voice when he told me to wrap myself in cotton wool.
It was love of you that propelled me through the birthing of you, sweating and overwhelmed, my body working harder than it ever had to expel you from the centre of me and give you over to the world, to your life.
The whole of reality burst apart in the moment you took your first breath, realigning itself around the startling fact that you existed. You. The most wonderful creature that had ever entered the world.
It was love that got up in the night to cradle you, to feed you. Love wasn’t always patient, no matter what Paul may have written to the Corinthians. Sometimes, love cried tears of frustration, but love never faltered.
Love makes me fierce, it makes me roar like a dragon when anyone dares to mistreat you. Love makes me want to hold you close, to breathe in the scent of you, to admire every inch, to never let you go. Love makes me let you go, in spite of that.
Love has meant losing you, piecemeal, since that first last push that freed you from my womb. A thousand paper-cuts along the way to adulthood. I have loved a thousand versions of you, only found now in photographs and video clips, each one lost to be replaced with another. I grieve the memory of those versions of you, each perfect in their moment.
I can describe my love of you, but the word itself is unsuited to the feeling. To the hyperbolic certainty that if you should leave this world, the stars would fall and all would become darkness. I can spout clichés; I would kill for you, I would die for you, all of that, without hesitation.
I do many things in the name of love, but those four letters are just a place holder until I discover the precise word that can hold all the meaning that I pour into them. How can you ask one word to contain all the emotion that threatens at time to burst from inside of me, shattering me into sunlight?
You can’t. So, my darling child, until there is there are just three words I have for you.
I love you.
Feedback: Average score: 335 (67%)
Marker comments:
Marker 1
- What I liked about this piece: Use of language, the reference to St Paul's letter to the Corinthians.
The heartfelt nature of the piece
- Favourite sentence: Love has meant losing you, piecemeal, since that first last push that freed you from my womb.
and
I grieve the memory of those versions of you, each perfect in their moment. - Feedback: As I read I was waiting for you to write that 'love is a verb, a doing word and not a noun, a naming word. It's a sentiment which would have fitted into your opening exposition. I think your essay might be improved by more characterisation of the child. As it stands it theoretically could be written by any mother and some specific details of the child (first cry, smile, laugh, first words, steps, teeth and so on) would have made this a more individual and personal piece for the reader. Without those more specific details I can't picture the characters and this gives a slightly academic, philosophical feel to this piece.
Marker 2
- What I liked about this piece: I like how it leads in, the immediate connection with love is romantic. So to break this and talk about the love for a child is a nice reveal slightly later on in the piece. It's nice to draw the comparisoon between the way the different loves opérate. I wil include this line that I also really enjoyed, very true... Storm, Drizzle, Cloudburst, Deluge, Cats and Dogs…but we work love so hard.
- Favourite sentence: A thousand paper-cuts along the way to adulthood.
- Feedback: It's a gente and soft piece. Could include a bit more of the grit, a bit more of the struggle that comes with the loving of a child.
Marker 3
- What I liked about this piece: Everything. It's elegant, with depth and raw honesty, and writes the absolute truth about maternal love in a way that is rarely captured. This is superb.
- Favourite sentence: A thousand paper-cuts along the way to adulthood.
- Feedback: This is a perfect poem capturing the fierce/soft all-encompassing meaning of the one unconditional love we experience. It's perfect, thank you.
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