Love can transform us. It can be a healing force or a disaster, a tidal wave, a tornado. It can burn and scar us or heal our scars. It can be the ghost that haunts us, or the best friend who reads our every thought. Love may arrive like an angel of mercy, a fairy with raven wings or a hairy beast that will tear us apart limb from limb, kill and savor us down to the bones.

You asked me who I thought I was before. I said maybe I was a fish because I love water and you said, you thought a mermaid, maybe. If you were a mermaid, you said, if you were a mermaid, I was the sea.

In Mexico people wear hummingbird amulets around their necks to show they are searching for love. Here people pretend that they aren’t. Searching.

If you were a mermaid, you said, If you were a mermaid, I was the sea.

I dreamed you were standing in this dark place and you touched these dead flowers and they lit up like they were electric or something. Electric lilies. Lighting up the Valley.

You must reach inside yourselves where I live like a story, not old, not young laughing at my own sorrow, weeping pearls at weddings, wielding a torch to melt sand into something clear and bright.

Once upon a time . . . What time are we upon and where do I belong?