‘What is Love?’
A song by Haddaway that I have been listening to recently.
Quite often lately.
I can’t keep, but going on the beat.
‘What is right?’ ‘What is wrong?’ ‘Baby, don’t hurt me, no more….’
All I hear is, ‘Don’t hurt me’.
And the need to know of what love is.
As the beat keeps on going, a vague memory is waking me up from the tunes.
Of someone I thought I loved.
I figured out I don’t love him. Or I didn’t.
I can’t remember anymore if this was at all a love situation.
Just a guy I met for a long time in a coffee place.
Where we sat in silence. Not even next to each other.
We never spoke.
The only thing that happened is that our eyes crossed.
For so many times. Just eyes meeting.
Fall, winter, spring and summer.
All I remember was a sunny day.
I stood outside in line for a coffee.
He stood in front of me and had just ordered.
Then he turned around.
I was right behind him.
It was the first moment we ever actually crossed.
We finally arrived in the same space of physical meeting of where there was a chance.
There was nothing else than for me to speak.
Because of what I think of what love is.
Is that it is a chance.
A beginning.
And there it was.
The space of where we were meeting.
To this guy, I only crossed eyes with, for so long.
I wondered.
Why these eyes?
But I had no time for that anymore.
He was approaching and there was little time left.
All I could say was : ‘Hi’.
And that is what I said.
‘Hi’
It was soft.
That was the end of it.
All the time there was.
His eyes looked up from his phone he was looking at.
Although my ‘hi’ was soft, it was loud enough for him to look up.
But perhaps it was just that I was in his way, that shook his attention.
‘I am on my way to a meeting’.
At least that is what he said.
And then he stared back at his phone again.
Like I never even existed.
I never crossed paths with him ever since.
It even took me a while to go back to that coffeeplace.
I had chosen the silent way this time.
Not speaking was better than words of that someone being too busy.
And the thoughts and confusion of what that all meant.
It was better to be spared from it again.
Whatever it was.
Was it Love?
The only question that remained.
And perhaps this is why this person was popping in my mind, whilst hearing this song.
I never knew. Was it love?
I believe this is a genuine question.
All I knew is that I didn’t want to get hurt anymore.
Like this song was saying.
But as the memory was fading from my mind, I wondered.
Is love hurtful?
Or is it that love can be hurtful, that we don’t want to love again?
That we don’t want to take that chance again?
As this is what I think what love is.
To take the chance, where there is no time anymore and all you can do is speak.