There Is Love and There Is Love

Joyce Carol Oates wrote a book called "My Sister, My Love."

And I picked up the book in the library because I saw the title and a zing! went through the synapses of my brain.

Finally, I thought, finally.



Love is not, by nature, rational, but there are degrees of rationality to it. There are elements of the sane that slip into the maddening sensations related to falling in love. But the way in which I love Meaghan runs deeper than this rationality.

It's primal. Instinctive.


There is love, and then there is fierce love.


The kind of love where you can't let her out of your sight. The kind of love where you agonize and ponder, feel the fear grip at your throat, feel the dread as palpably as a slap against your cheek. The kind of love where you know without question that if anyone was to touch her or hurt her, you would hunt them to the corners of the remote world and kill them brutally, without question. The kind of love where you want to hold her close against you, breathe in her smell until the ends of time, because you somehow believe that if you never let her go, never release her from your protective grip, you, flimsy, human you, can stop all the bad things in the world from touching her.

It goes deeper than love. It's under the skin, under the layers of vessels, sunk even under the marrow of your bones. You feel it in the core of you, this love.



My sister has given me two rings. One is alexandrite, a beautiful kiwi green. Inside, our initials are engraved in careful, slanting script. K & M. The other is a series of three rings. two of them smaller amythests, the middle, a larger pearl. They are Meaghan and I, our birthstones, linked together, like two arms wrapped around in a hug.



These are the only rings I wear. It is no mistake that they fit securely on my ring fingers. I may love men, and many of them, but my sister is my bride until the end. She is my one true love, stretching beyond the limits of relationship. We share the same blood, the same mother, the same cheekbones, the same long lashes. We were sprung from the same woman, and in the end, we will go back to the dust and mingle together through the ages of the world.

She is my sister, my love.