Love

I went apple picking once. Each bright, green apple I picked from the tree tumbled into my vine-woven basket, getting slightly bruised by all the apples below, but still sweet. Each one left me wanting more. Soon enough, there were no more apples I could reach, and I was on the tips of my feet, toes pointed toward the emerald-green grass. With one hand shielding away the sun, I stepped back. I gazed up at the tree waving her branches and rustling her airy leaves in the breeze. From the base up, there seemed to be an ocean of branches, intricately woven through the air. Several bright green specks were sprinkled upon each wave of wood. Climb, she said. As one of the branches extended downward almost as if the tree was lending me a hand, I joyously grabbed on.

Suddenly, the intricacies of the ocean seemed to simplify. I ascended the tree, heart fluttering, each branch leading me to apple after apple. I glided up along the trunk, harvesting all of the branches’ green specks, tens of fruits tumbling into my basket. Then, the sun began breaking through the complex of wood. Small rays of light began leaking through the leaves. The thin leaks became streams, then rivers. As I emerged on top, I glanced down. All of the green specks I had seen before were in my basket. She had run out of fruits to give and time to share. As I took a bite out of the fruits of our labor, savoring the time and the moments we had, I smiled. A little bruised, but still sweet.

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The moon is beautiful tonight. The radiant beacon of the void leads its twinkling companions to shine. Despite the wrinkles and craters caused by the thousands of asteroids that have slammed into our moon’s face, Grandmother Moon still illuminates the face of the earth that the sun cannot. Being tidally locked to our planet, the grandmother hides a side of her past–the side of her that her love does not allow her to show, even though some of it slips through anyway. This is the side of her that does not waste, for it knows what it’s like to not have anything to waste.

For the Earth, with its young lands lush and waters painted baby blue, Grandmother Moon was infinite. She was forever orbiting and forever caregiving. After all, she accompanied our planet through every stage of its life, from the hot and hellish childhood to the first emergence of life to the development of humanity. Rising before the morning every day, she walked me, hand in hand, to the sun’s palace. There, I met many other planets, all racing around the yellow star. And as dusk approached, and I began to search for her hand again, burnt and exhausted, she was always there, ready to walk me back.

It was on one of our nightly walks when she introduced me to time. On the gravel path, she moved patiently, each foot gently caressing the path with each step, the light breeze lightly brushing her back. Compared to my childish, stubby stomps that displaced tens of pebbles, she moved like an angel, leaving no trace. Periodically, Grandmother would stop and gaze past the wispy sweetgrass and the silver lake, a sliver of the other side trickling through her expression. “Grandma is old,” she said, squeezing my hand. Old. I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I wouldn’t have let go of her hand so willingly back then if I had. In the lake, I saw the ripples on the mirrored sky and the doubled stars. The moon was beautiful like always, its light glittering down on the gravel path. However, for some reason, that day, its wrinkles seemed deeper. Now I know why.

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Where the sea meets the sand, the tides gently run up the incline. Beyond this border, there exists an abyssal void of black and navy waters. This void is cold; light from the sun can only go down so deep. Rhythmically kicking, I crept forward into the void, hauling my life in a metal tank on my back. Dark navy filled my peripheral vision. Occasionally, a small sliver of sun would shoot into the goggles half the size of my face. I did not shiver, it wasn’t that kind of cold. This cold was the cold that tires you, the type that slowly steals your vision and depresses your awareness until you sink. The type of cold that forces the dolphins and the whales to surface–their fins and their blowholes, stabbing and cutting through the surface of the ocean, the air bleeding into their lungs and refilling them of what the cold took from them until they come back needing more.

I glanced down, staring the depths in the eyes. I know there’s more. Beyond the depths, beyond the cold, and beyond the dark, warmth does exist. It comes from the inside–within my planet’s mantle. Under the crust, it exists in abundance. Metal and rock liquified by the heat, by the life, and by the love of our planet. I must get past the waters. I swam downwards, my periodic kicks turning frantically disordered, the tank on my back resisting the pressure. As the life on my back dissipated, time running out, I kept propelling myself down. I will not drown. I refuse. Even if this journey is hard, even if there are millions of gallons of water on my back and zero air in my lungs, I refuse to drown, for I know someday I will reach the warmth, and I will know the life, and the Earth will finally say “I love you.”

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Time kills. Given enough of a dose of time, all life will cease to exist. Our cities and countries will be consumed by time. The apple tree will wither and rot, the moon will fade, and the oceans will soon evaporate. Even the Earth will die either by being consumed by the expanding sun or by the hand of its own people. However, love is immune. No matter how many blows by the river of time it takes, it prevails. Love is a concept that transcends time. It is immortal and everlasting. Even after my apple tree falls, even after my moon loses its glow, and even after I eventually return to dust, the words “I love you” will forever be uttered, shouted, screamed, murmured, thought, texted, vocalized, cried, and dreamt again and again and again.