♥ variations on the word love.

this is a word we use to plug

holes with. it's the right size for those warm

blanks in speech, for those red heart

shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing

like real hearts. add lace

and you can sell

it. we insert it also into the one empty

space on the printed form

that comes with no instructions. there are whole

magazines with not much in them

but the word love, you can

rub it all over your body and you

can cook with it too. how do we know

it isn't what goes on at the cool

debaucheries of slugs under damp

pieces of cardboard? as for the weed

seedlings nosing their snouts up

among the lettuces, they shout it.

love! love! sing the soldiers, raising

their glittering knives in solute.

then there's the two

of us.

this word is far too short for us, it's basically

four letters, too sparse

to fill those deep bare

vaccuums between the stars

that press on us with their deafness,

it's not love we don't wish

to fall into, but that fear.

this word is not enough, but it will

have to do. it's a single

vowel in this metallic

silence, a mouth that says

O again and again in wonder

and pain, a breath, a finger

grip on a cliffside. you can

hold on or let go.

margaret atwood

{images via vi.sualize.us}