A reflection on the holy ache of love—how it lives in us, how it shapes us, and how, sometimes, we must let it breathe without us. This piece belongs to the fire-lit quiet where survival and love coexist.
Love isn’t a choice.
It isn’t a decision.
It is a default. A divine state.
The way breath happens without trying,
without knowing—
that is love.
That is our love,
whether for a song or a story,
for animals or a wild wind,
for a vision,
or a soul.
We are love.
We have embodied it… become it.
This is the weight we carry.
This is the fire within us that lights the way
for so many—
but feels like burning alive
for us.
And in times of heartache,
when the world sharpens its noise,
when grief coils into our chests,
we do not run—
we retreat.
We ache for the world
because we are still tethered
to the breath of it.
We have done our part, we have
showed up, and done our work.
Make no mistake, we continue to.
From the shadows, in our tonal silence,
our love still flows.
Reverberates.
Echoes.
We do not walk away because we are cold.
We step away simply because we are melting.
We step away… to survive.
That is what survivors do.
We do not stop loving.
We stop offering our tangible lives, for a time,
to those who can not—or will not—feel us.
Those who may never know…after all,
they have forgotten even themselves.
We pause.
To love like this,
to grieve like this,
is to carry the holy burden:
to hold light for others
while burning through
your own bones.
But it is also
to breathe.
So if we disappear,
if we go quiet,
if we bow out—
know this:
It is not rejection.
It is not retraction.
It is survival.
Because we do not want to die
along with what is dying.
Instead, we love from a distance
while allowing what is dead to rest.
Love is not a thing we give.
It is what we are.
When we cast ourselves back into silence,
it is to return… to the breath.
To the fire, before we burn out.
To the only place
where the burning becomes light again.
Like love itself, it is not a choice.
We must.
catacosmosis 