Love Looks Like
Originally published on October 05th, 2019
On my dresser sits a picture of my grandparents on their wedding day. My Nanna, only 18 years old, smiling into the camera in a snapshot of black and white nostalgia. Her veil falling onto my Grandad’s cheek, both of them beaming. Love looks like dark hair and a sweeping veil.
In the span of five decades, things are added and some are taken away. There are glasses now, gray hairs, seven grandchildren. There has been laughter, and there has been tears. Good days and bad. Love looks like bifocals and shorter, grayer hair.
50 years. 600 months. 2,607 weeks. 182,050 days. 438,000 hours. 26,280,000 minutes. 1,576,800,000 seconds. From the black and white snapshot to the gray hair and seven grandchildren. Love looks like time and all that it gives.
In the span of 50 years, the ocean moves back and forth. Stars form new constellations that we will not see for hundreds of years. Love looks like the star that is the mark upon which it stands.
Sometimes you think you know what love looks like before you’ve really met it. When you’re young, love looks like the newest trend. When you are young, love looks like Shakespeare. And when you’re older, love simply looks like home. When you’re older, love looks like time.
On my dresser sits a picture of black and white nostalgia. Two people who do not know what will become of them. Do not know of the time, the clock that they will run, or the stairs they will climb. They only knew the reason and the remedy. Love looks like the answers, and the chase to find them.
Love looks like the years, and the passing time. Love looks like the stars, the stairs, and the questions. Love looks like the reason. Love looks like the story.
“No sooner met but they looked, no sooner looked but they loved, no sooner loved but they sighed, no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason, no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage.”
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It
I wrote this poem on January 31st, 2018. It was written for my paternal grandparents for their 50th wedding anniversary, and I read it when I went to England the following March. A couple weeks ago, my Grandad died. That day, I was finishing packing for school, and I saw the picture above in the frame I brought to school last time. That made me think of this poem, and I went back and read it for the first time in a while. I can’t be at the memorial, so I’m sharing this poem again. It’s all I have for this.