The thing about love is…
A best man speech with a poetry slam twist • Written on September 8, 2021
Everyone here is falling in love today, not necessarily with a person or a place, but rather falling back in love with love itself.
When seeing, witnessing, feeling, and admiring the couple that we have the honor of celebrating today, we too can fall back in love.
With the inspiration of you and you, I wrote this:
The thing about love is,
It makes you feel things you can’t touch.
It has you listen to things that you can’t hear.
It has you see things that are invisible to the eye.
Love makes the heart flutter, skip, and flip.
It makes the breath catch.
and time pause.
It suspends limiting beliefs.
It transcends the moments.
It has-
no end.
Love is interlacing fingers.
It is electricity on the skin with no lightning insight.
It is the infinite space that surrounds you on a starry night.
It is the touching foreheads and asking the other, where have you been?
Love is seeing beauty, even when it is not pretty every day.
Love is trips to Trader Joe’s, lazy Sundays, phone calls before the world wakes up,
and
it’s rescuing the car out of deep snow on a back road in the middle of the night.
Love is dancing with the wildness of joy,
and letting ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning yourselves to
be careful to-
be realistic to-
remember the limitations of being human.
Now, if you really knew Jay you would know, that-
In the name of love, he will put you, before himself that-
He will show up with his whole being.
And that he-
also gets bashful from compliments.
He gently tilts his chin down, purses his lips, wears a small smirk, and his eyes twinkle.
On the outside it is endearing and cute, but,
on the inside, the compliment is waiting on the steps of a locked door for the love to be let in.
If you really knew Jubes, that’s what I call him, you would know that-
For years, that door has been locked and sealed tight.
He has searched inside the depths of his being for that key.
If you really knew this love story, you would know-
the day of Jay’s birthday,
He had one wish.
And he wished for love.
and that night,
he met Curtis.
So when this tall, handsome, bearded man showed up
It wasn’t a flashlight that he used to shine the way to discover that key to unlock Jay’s door,
but rather
it was the light from his own being.
As Curtis began to illuminate Jay’s life, that key, was found.
Slowly, Jay surrendered and let Curtis
unlock his heart.
And like a flood gate, love poured in.
Jubes-
You’ve found a person that will paint trails on maps with the colors of memories.
The person that makes you spill oxytocin with each eye lock.
The person that will dance in the lights and fumble in the shadows with you.
The person that survived standing in the fire of his own pain
and will stand with you in yours without having
to hide it,
fade it,
or fix it.
A person that will not shy away no matter how deep it burns.
A person that will lean in, when all else.. falls away.
And Curt-
You’ve found the person who confuses the light in your eyes for sunrise.
The one who is the littlest big spoon I’ve ever met.
You’ve found a person that will hold you the way a mountain holds a glacier.
You are free to slowly flow.
To change and grow.
You are supported yet free…
allowed to expand and contract- oscillating in your being.
You have found the person that will remind you of your inner compass, the one that can point
you in the direction of your True North.
This is a love that has settled into the smile lines around your eyes
And swept the cobwebs from your heart.
This is a love that will grow old and weathered, but will never fade.
It will always stand strong like the mountains around us and can ebb and flow like the lake just
through those trees.
A soul-connected love that has been waiting for this lifetime to be reunited…at last.
So Honeys,
Always remember-
Paradise is within reach with just a single thought, so-
venture on the horizon
scrape the sky with your fingertips
frolic in pumpkin patches and on beaches.
Take no moment for granted.
Interlace your hearts and feel deeply.
Lean into one another.
Kiss him like forgiveness.
Hold him like he is hope.
Bandage your arms and press promises between you like flowers in a book.
