I did not prepare to write to you (again) on love, and yet here we are: ebbing between distant memories and trying to stay afloat in the murky waters of what will come next.

The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet all the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb[1]. To truly love, we must learn to mix various ingredients –care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication[2]. Dictionary definitions of love tend to emphasize romantic love, defining love first and foremost as a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person, especially when based on sexual attraction[3]. It is the discussion of threads, the proclamation of a twitter bot, and the reason for tests and calculators. However, deep affection does not really adequately describe love’s meaning[4]. What words could we use instead, if not love?

Could we think through desire? There are at least two ways to understand the emergence of a desire: one is through a moment, when something shifts and the way you act and react, the way you turn things over, is fundamentally altered. The other is through accrual, how over time and repetition our histories draw us toward certain practices and ways of feeling and wanting[5]. It is love’s inscription[6]. Some inscriptions we wear like dreams – fragments of a life untethered from this world, messages from a future reflected to us like light off broken shards[7]. What does one do with the brokenness between?[8] What is to be done with the resulting impulses, these nerve endings flickering like an illuminated map of thieving constellations? The stars pulse[9].

So it is a lover who speaks and who says[10]: Love’s joy is not to be found in fulfilment, but in recognition: even though I can never return what was taken away from you, I may be the only person alive who knows what it is. I don’t have what it is you’re missing, but knowing its shape already makes a world where you can live without it.[11]

It was not that long ago that we last danced together, remember? My back was turned and you held me tight in your arms as the night was closing in. That was the first night we met. We listened to Mavis Staples until 4am. You spoke with vivacity about how love and monogamy aren’t synonymous, any of my probes met with a gentle rebuttal. Infatuation tripped and fell into something awkward and potentially short-sighted[12]. Chemical exchanges[13]. Friction, rub, graze, hug, fuck[14]. The sky was breaking, shades of lilac shot through, cascading down from the clouds and through the glass onto our skin[15]. I thought: this is exactly what gentleness feels like.

There are moments when life feels infinite and this is how I feel when I think of you[16]. Leaving traces of ourselves and our own affective states (which are never really just our own)[17]. I want to stay with you all afternoon, evening, night and tomorrow, pressed into you so tightly that we don’t know whose belly made what sound, whose heart it is that is thumping like that, until I don’t know if the sweat on my chest is yours or mine or ours[18]. I want to burrow so deep in language with you that we exceed it[19]. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual [20]. Without attaching want but rather an irrepressible satisfaction in their existence[21]. Intimacy, but in different ways[22].

In, through, and with love: we become vulnerable[23]. Vulnerability as an acknowledgment of the desire for intimacy[24]. I’m still learning how to be vulnerable with you. Our desire to be adorned, to have comforts [25] . Every movement or word becomes significant[26]. Obliged to repress our own vulnerability, we become detachable from our bodies, each other, and the world. But what does vulnerability actually mean? Is it being able to acknowledge a state of pain or insecurity, embracing the feeling of coming undone?[27] Could I overcome my terror of falling apart if I allowed myself to rely on others, on you?[28] I was by no means the only person who’d puzzled over these questions.[29]

I’ve been able to experience my love and loss in a measured and continuous way; to remember.[30] The body always remembers [31]. It remains unclear on the question of whether each time we remember something we are accessing a stable memory fragment – often called a trace or an engram – or whether each time we remember something we are literally creating a new trace to house the thought.[32] When my heart races, dimples, breaks, is weary and deflates, it never exhausts. How is that possible? How does it maintain? Stays going.

It’s percussive.[33] I fall. I flow. I melt.[34]

Right now, I think one way to love is by cultivating awareness.[35] Being aware enables us to critically examine our actions to see what is needed so that we can give care, be responsible, show respect, and indicate a willingness to learn. [36] There are at least two approaches: To witness[37], to choose to act precisely[38]. And, by learning to love in friendships[39]. Not be directed to only one person, but to everyone[40]. For there is also something spectacular to be found in sharing, doing, organising, eating, and even just being together in a certain moment. This tenderness is a force of resynchronization. Maybe it is a new kind of force altogether[41]. I like to believe that it is. This makes for a beautifully collective endeavour so long as you can stay beautiful, tender, and kind to your lovers, and so long as they stay that way to you.[42]

When we choose to love we choose to move against fear –against alienation and separation.[43] And yet we do live by the ideal that a self is or can become whole by overcoming brokenness, or finding love.[44] Daily notifications from Co-star seem to reiterate a similar sentiment as banners drop down onto my phone screen to tell me ‘you will not fall apart right now’ and to ‘experiment with tenderness’ and to remind me ‘you love and are loved’. The choice to love is a choice to (re)connect – to find ourselves in the other[45] . But is this not the same as loving and being open to building together by performing fearless acts of love[46] and by fearlessly accepting love. Are we tethered then in wanting to improve difficult circumstances by forming bonds of intimacy and solidarity?[47]

I find fragments of myself and what I’ve learned of love lodged in this accumulation of words. Love is a lived critical engagement with and disarticulation of dominant culture.448] The construction of language as an act of and a meditation on love, and a place to store it. The gesture of referencing as care and as gift.[49] Always thinking and listening with or alongside one another. To cultivate anticipation of another world and to live now dedicated to the task of turning this world into a better one.[50] We can celebrate and honour communalism and interdependency by sharing resources.[51] Might our bonds be strengthened in columns and tabs?

We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell. What matters is kindness; what matters is solidarity.[52] There is also so much to learn and do.[53] I know it’s hard, but we need each other. Let’s inhale and exhale together.[54]

Do we have each other at least?[55]

I hope something in this letter will help,

June