Love Languages

What happens when our languages shift for no clear reason?

In the last couple of years of my marriage, I felt like I was living with a ghost. I felt this deeply and intensely and yet I said nothing. I knew it was no one’s fault. My husband had been suffering from depression and anxiety for years. His job took all that he had to give, and left him hollowed out at the end of the day. He slept a lot. I wrote a lot.

I wrote a lot of poems that were about love, loss, break-ups, silence and endings in those two years. Not always conscious that I was writing about me. I was writing from a feeling or an image that had arisen in me- something I hadn’t cleanly named yet. In my journals I was trying to reconcile my desire to leave with what I knew to be the “right thing”- to stay and to work through my own loneliness. To give it time. The cultural conditioning went deep.

It hadn’t always been that way. I knew this. I wanted to stay in hope things would return to the way they once were.

In May we went to Tuscany. He was full of fun, lightness and adventure and for a moment I thought I could stay. But when we returned and the dark cloud was back- the lightness of Italy only made it heavier. And by August I couldn’t bear it any longer. I finally spoke.

Photo by Sergey Pesterev on Unsplash

About six months before I left, I wrote this poem. I realise now, I had written the end.

It had come from a prompt on Threads by Professor Kiki, who had given us the borrowed line- “languages shifted for no clear reason” from Larry Levis poem, The Widening Spell of the Leaves. I wrote a version of the verse this line appears in on threads and Kiki suggested it would be good as a longer poem. Later that night I sat and wrote Love Languages. It spilled out of me. I didn’t really look at it again until after the separation and then I saw what I had written.

I’ve performed it twice now. Once at a Shout or Whisper poetry event and once in a women’s circle, at a retreat I was running a storytelling session at. I offer it here to anyone, who has watched love change over the years or lost themselves for a while in the silence.

Love Languages

Our Love was a beach in the Mediterranean,

we were speaking of romance—

sharing the language of touch.

Holding our breath

as the rhythmic waves lapped the shore.

union, harmony, symphony,

Languages of time and touch.

Our love became a train ride

through the Siberian desert,

we spoke of destiny

and huddled under soft blankets,

while gazing at the stars.

My skin heard the whisper of yours,

knew it’s cadence, it’s tone.

Languages of touch in time.

Our love has become an orchard

filled with blossoms,

we are speaking of forever and eternity

while the fruits ripen.

Your teeth sinking into firmness

and juices dripping down my chin.

With peels of laughter ringing in our ears,

we lie naked in the meadow,

draped in the brightness of the sun.

Languages of time in each touch.

Our love settled in a city of bright lights

and swirling winds.

Skyscrapers rose around patches of green

and leaves turned and fell in parks.

On empty benches,

whispers lost on breezes,

were found again between stations and sirens,

our fingers laced at silent crossings.

Languages between touch and time.

Our love journeyed again into the night.

We danced stiffly—

in a ballroom hung with crystal chandeliers.

We barely felt the boat rock.

We spoke

of very little—

admired the other guests.

Our translated words

commanded the crew.

No one mentioned the water

rising below the deck.

In the icy waters you clung to me

and I to you

The muffled sounds from above

faded in waterlogged ears.

Languages of just in time

touching the edge.

Our love settled in a new land

with a stranger tongue

and we rolled the words over our lips

as we exchanged kisses.

our “languages shifted for no clear reason”.

You spoke

and I only heard the stones of the earth rumble

and the darkness behind my eyes spilled over.

I whispered my griefs

and reached for your hand

but you had already turned to stone.

My love wandered in the desert heat,

the sand burning my toes.

I spoke of longing

and felt the ache in my chest

where my heart had been fused with yours.

My cheek remembered

the brush of your lips—

in the language of home,

as the salt spilled over it.

My love entered the forest,

as dawn was breaking.

I spoke of healing and balms,

of herbs and salves.

I swam in the cool lake and left

my tattered clothes on the side.

I ran my fingers over silver lines and soft dimples

and heard my own song

for the first time.

The shifts in language

as clear as the waters.

It’s actually been a difficult year, this last year. I sort of thought I wasn’t allowed to say that, as I was the one who left. But it was a big adjustment after 31 years and while leaving was right for me, there was a lot of grief to walk through.

I quite like bringing you a poem and the story behind it. Hopefully that works for you as readers. But I have other ideas too.

I’m in the middle of writing an essay about why I hate the book The 5 love Languages by Gary Chapman and how it was given to us as a young married couple by our church pastor. I might bring that next week. For a different take on Love Languages.