If I asked you about art you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. Seen that?
And if I asked you about women, probably give me a syllabus of your personal favorites, you may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy.
You’re a tough kid. I ask you about war you’d probably throw Shakespare at me, right? Once more into the breach dear friends…, but you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap and watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help.
I ask you about love, probably quote me a sonnet, but you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling that God put an angel on Earth just for you, who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn’t know what’s it like to be her angel. To have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. You wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term “visiting hours” don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself, and don’t you ever dare to love anybody that much.
