My writing instructor at the festival said a write finds form by the process of writing, can trust the creative process to yield the shape and pattern words should assume. I wonder if love is the same? If the act of loving reveals the shape of that love.

My love for my son is warm like hot honey tea, a belly-filled feeling, not a shape, unless the shape is the shape of me. I loved my mother: the curve of her tidy nails, coffee-smell teeth, white stomach folds, each petechia and freckle and insertion point of every insulin-streaming needle. I cannot re-love her now, yet still feel the pattern of her prayers like fingertip taps on my back. She drew me toward sleep by drawing shapes on my night-gowned back–a frying pan with eggs and bacon, our cat, a heart. My father, his hands. My husband a house. Not our house, but the home he builds around me. When I leave the door open in a rush, he never changes the locks.

I am greedy for love. Maybe it’s age, but I want to try love out on everyone. If I can leave love along with signing my name on the waiter’s receipt, I will. I will two-hand grasp the odd man’s outstretched hand after briefly meeting. Meet a stranger’s gaze with a grin. Maybe I’ll just repeat I love I love I love I love I love I love until my heart picks up the rhythm, picks out a desire line, beats one foot in front of another down a path leads me there to love, but I suspect will lead here to where I am. — What is a vessel if water refuses to fill it? — leads me to circle only myself.