Theory of Love #1

Arms on a clock are known as hands. 

A thermometer is round and has an arm but is not a clock. The thermometer’s arm  is known as a pointer and is connected to a spring coil at the center of a probe. I am looking at a pressed-metal thermometer which shows a palm tree on an island in a deep blue sea, set against a faded sky. The palm has been blown jaunty and tips to the warmer side. There are no fingers. The pointer is notched like a straight-stemmed arrowhead. 

Love is fleet-footed Achilles, always going towards something but advancing halfway with each stride, racing, as it speeds. Instead of distance, love itself is diminished. Will it ever arrive?

A thermometer’s sensor is a spring coil made of metal that expands when exposed to heat. 

Time and water. Love and temperature. 

Yes, it’s never the same twice. Yes, it’s almost the same.

No, that round thing on the garden wall will not tell time, no matter how clock-like it appears.  

Because numbers count down below zero, mistaking a thermometer for a clock could lead to the conclusion that there is time before time itself.

How can we not try to measure love? How can we not run to win?

The expansion of the coil with heat pushes the needle on the thermometer’s dial. Soft or loud, a clock collects sound: going, going, gone. Thermometer collects heat even when it measures cold.

As the pointer swings tropical, the world falls heavy, quiet. 

Love carries a sack of gratitude, misshapen by praise and sonnets. Each step doubles gravity. The winner hides within a scarred green shell.

On this garden wall, the thermometer reads true in the morning but exaggerates as the sun ascends. By noon it measures impossibility. Since the garden is unlit, at night, no one can tell whether it is hot or cold.