Call her up; tell her how love is not a question. It is an answer and it deserves to be repeated when ever the question is asked.
What is the question? Everything. Everything from, "How do I look?" to "Will you turn off the oven?" "What's on television?" "Where are you going?" "Do you love me?" "Can you feed the dog?" "Who's on first?"
Love. Love. Love. Love. Always the answer. Different forms and different faces to respond to but always the same.
You have already been told to tell people they are beautiful and then you will change the world. This is true.
What you also need to know is that if you tell people that you love them, you will make the world go away.
It keeps happening to me. Listen.
Six years ago I thought my world would end. I lost everything I thought I had and didn't know what to do with myself.
I met a boy in a bar and I got drunk enough to ask him, "What will I do with my life? Where will I go? What is left?"
He said, "Love."
Oh, there were many more words that went along with that but that is the only part I got. The jukebox and the hoots and hollers drowned out the rest of the conversation. The pool balls broke and cracked the middle of his sentences. I didn't hear them. So it was love, love, love, repeating through my head breaking the monotonous hum of sliding glasses and country music.
He was right. Love. And it all worked out.
Before that there was a teacher who told me I had talent.
I said, "Now what makes you think that?"
She said, "You love what you are doing. And that is talent enough."
Love, love, love.
It all comes back to me. To you. To him and to her. You tell people you love them and it makes them stop and think. It makes them fall in love with the world all over again.
I know this boy, Devon, age 13. Prime in puberty and emotions and tempers. Angry and he doesn't know why.
But when the girl from algebra class told him that she loved him, he wasn't angry anymore. He knows why.
He took a test in math and the bonus question was, "What do you call it when you have zero points in tennis?"
Love.
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