Love Wine Glass Stone

Love is…

Wine, heady and strong, to be drunk whenever possible. The aroma, filling your nostrils with perfume and your head with memories of pleasures known and pleasures to be had. The colors, whether red or white or somewhere in between, artfully nuanced by Love, filling your mouth, rushing over the tongue, to fill the belly with warmth and bliss.

It fills the brain with passion, lust and the occasional madness. Madness that perhaps is not completely undesirable. It is madness with a purpose, is it not?

Love is…

The crystal glass, elegant and fragile, into which we pour the wine of ourselves. We open the bottle, remove the cork and let the liquid flow into the smooth curves of the vessel which we hope beyond reason will receive us. Wine splashes into the glass in languid curls, folding over themselves to rejoin in slowly settling ripples of deep, gemlike radiance. The glass a vessel we trust to catch us before we fall and dissolve in a million drops.

The glass is strong in some directions, but not in others. Drop it or knock it over and see it shatter in a cloud of tiny daggers, each carrying the full memory of love and the threat of bloodletting. The wine of our love spreads in a stain.

The risk we take, with a vessel so alluring. Yet we willingly, eagerly take the glass by the stem to bring the precious liquid to our lips. We have no choice but to drink.

Love is…

Rock and stone. The bones of the earth become the foundation of the things that hold us up. We see it as the end all, be all. Permanent and unbending, the thing we believe we can count on to always be there no matter the circumstance. And with its smooth coolness, the sleek granite countertop upon which we rest our glass of wine takes on the solidity of faith: It simply is, and we don’t question it.

Until that day we go to set the glass down, and like a chair pulled away by a prankster, the countertop is gone out from under. We watch helplessly as the glass cartwheels to the floor, disintegrating on impact.

The hands flutter helplessly, clawing at air in a futile attempt to grab the glass in mid-flight. We know the ultimate result, but we swat and flail just the same. Occasionally we catch it.

Love is...

Sometimes a bottle of wine we did not know we had, a glass hidden in a cabinet, a countertop obscured by dust. We only have to look again to find them, brush them off.

The bottle is open. The glass awaits. The counter gleams. A toast, dear friends: here’s to love, deep, rich and delicious. The stuff of life!