it’s strange but the biggest question i have regarding love is not who i will love romantically, or when i will love romantically, but rather why. why will i love romantically? why will i choose someone to ride next to in the mini-van forever? why will i disregard knit with this person and ask that he do the same? why will my hand need to find his leg under the table when the dinner party conversation is clearly “trying too hard” and squeeze* are you thinking what i’m thinking? why a ring on my finger that will blink and bling like an advertisement in Time Square reading: “we just knew, ya know?!” why will i day by day confess the parts of me that are true, really true, really awfully true: my bad thoughts, bad teeth, impervious moods and the tendancy to be demonstrative when i’m nervous. why will i willingly give someone audience to my nervous demonstrations? would ever a traveling circus just decide to stay put in one city year after year, presenting the same monkey riding horse trick like du-du-du-dun! it’s the greatest show on earth? why will he come back knowing the concessions are never changing? funnel cakes and ipa’s: stomachache. tootchache. heartache. this is the trifecta which replaces novelty. why will i, as natural as day, find myself dancing on his body in order to make a song? and what sort of party is this anyway that the dancing comes before the music? that the dancing must be made to look a fool if the music never starts? how many songs will we make and why will i care? why will i hope if when he lifts the veil and finds a leah, he is content not to have the other sister? or say i am his rachel, why will i then need him to convince me, spend the rest of time convincing me, never stop convincing me it is the case? why will i let myself be this needy to a man? i will say his name a million times for a million different reasons. and it will start to sound funny kind of like the way anything sounds funny if you say it three times fast, even and especially iloveyou-iloveyou-iloveyou. why will i need to say and hear this cackling cry regardless? why will i spend my life lying down on the grass next to him, watching ethereal lights go up and down a ladder? we will hold our breath between intervals. if i do not see an angel descend for weeks on end, if i am turning blue and no oxygen, he will pretend to spot one, will say You must have blinked and Wow it was super bright! why will i need him to believe for me sometimes or lie so help you God? why will i ask him to swear on the stand that This is the way it happened, and You see, she made all the smallest tasks lovely. why a hermit to confess me? why his witness as proof that i was real? and why without him will i start to dissapear one limb, one phone call, one half eaten cheese sandwich at a time? he will say that minus signs are not permissible in the type of relational algebra we make. but i was never very good at mathmatics, so i’ll make him tell why, why, why, why again again again. and as he pulls me up close to his face, so that our eyes are making coversation, he will turn the palm of my hand upward and trace the uniqueness quantification equation:

∃! (X) ⋈ (Y)

which translates: backwards-E exclamation X bowtie Y

and which also translates: there is one and only one natural joining of me(X) and you(Y)

then i will know i’ve been asking the wrong question all along. maybe the real question is who … because who is the why.

so, who is why?

who is Y?

who are YOU?