Love is a Broken Sonnet

Love is a Broken Sonnet

So there are the hearts, the candles
the chocolate and the jewelry
we use to quantify and exemplify
one's love for the other.
Valentine's, the essence of romance
the prophecy of ideal love.
Yet aside the furnishings and generous giving,
lies the path many seem to miss.
Romance is humanity's adventure
through unforgiving time. Unbridled
and unabashed against all odds.
Just as there is no mother's day,
Valentines should be everyday.


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I wrote this piece on this same Valentine's evening of 2003 as a naive high school senior, eager and optimistic to be thrust headlong into college. My experiences with love have since journeyed through the heights of pure ecstasy, forever strengthening my fragile ruminations of happiness, to the dark personal depths of loneliness.

Through it all, I've learned that love is something to be cherished. I'm not as disapproving now of Valentine's Day as I was four years ago, when I first pledged to shed a critical eye on the disgustingly commodified world of contrived holidays like Christmas and Valentines. I realize now that there are indeed some genuine expressions amidst the symbolic cloaks of flowers and hearts.

Still, I look back at the most eventful four years of my life and recount moments where it seemed like time truly stood still. Regardless of all the moments of doubt I can recount, I always keep in mind those special moments where I have felt that life is indeed more beautiful than I can ever imagine. Its moments like these when I feel more alive than ever: when staring across a mountain vista, reaching my arms out and turning my mind outward to an infinitesimal vision of peace and hope, to sharing the company of good friends and lovers, turning my arms inwards and wrapping them around comfort and intimacy.

Sometimes when I sleep, I envision myself falling back in midair, wafted along by my natural state. I'm four years ahead in the future, looking back, reveling in new experiences of love and adventure and happiness and hope. Still in my dream, I drift on, waking at the feet of dazzling emotion. Life is good.