smile lines and pain - Tapa blanda

'Only in love was I ever not simply surviving; and even then, precariously so. Love, at its pinnacle, is lonely and violent. It entices us to live rather than endure, and to do so instills in us the ability to mute our most fundamental survival instincts. It invites us to perch perilously on the precipice of death, if only to breathe deeply for a moment. It tempts us to risk; rather, it gives us the ability to ignore risks, thinking them ripe for conquest. But tragedy is a weighty burden which love cannot offset. Even if it’s true that we reap what we sow, on occasion crops are wiped from the earth by droughts, floods, fires, or individuals with a greater sense of entitlement than us. Love, so flirtatious with death, did not save me from sunrises, severed limbs, or sorrow; it could not. Love, ultimately, is an unquenchable fire, hungry only for the unfermented flesh of blossoming romance.'

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