Last night while walking hand in hand with my partner through the west village we saw the most handsome of butch/femme couples. They were easily in there 80’s and out on an evening stroll through the neighborhood. I couldn’t look away. There love of each other radiated on the hot night and pounded into the pavement with each shuffled slow step. It was….. beautiful and simple, and inspiring and reminded me how right the world can be sometimes.

It was unexpectedly, a night full of remembering the importance of love. Before seeing the couple we walked past a construction site and some graffiti inspired me to take out my phone to capture the moment. I haven’t played with the lighting or contrast on the photo at all, just early evening light sinking over the buildings and reflecting onto the plywood of a construction site.

I’m pretty stressed right now. I was laid off from my gay4pay day job a little over a month ago. I’ve had several interviews but no serious bites yet, on top of heading into the most ambitious fall touring schedule to colleges I’ve ever attempted, teaching and reading at Floating World this weekend, and next weekend off to San Francisco (if you’re in the bay please please come to some of my events – 4 events in 3 days woot!) needless to say I was a little stressed out yesterday. By nature I’m an anxious, easily overwhelmed and stressed out person more often than not, and so even though at the end of the day I know things are alright, that we have money in savings and unemployment benefits. Even though I recognize we’re in far better shape than we could be, I still sometimes let the stress envelop me.

Last night felt like a cosmic face slap. A reminder, a wakeup call, a sign- whatever you want to call it, I got the message. Everything really is going to work out, and love is the answer. I plan to avoid stumbling down the path of quoting Beatles ‘all you need is love’ to y’all in order to (probably legitimately) avoid the risk of loosing all my readers, but I figured I’ll go as close to that as I can.

A few months ago I wrote a piece called ‘Scars’ that I read at Queer Memoir here in NYC, I ended the piece by saying:

“For me, love is the only thing that matters. Love has the power to destroy, but it’s also what saved me. Love is the knife that carved every scar on all three of my hearts, and is behind ever drop of ink on my skin. It’s what I’ve built my life on. I write a lot about pain and loss, about homelessness, abuse, and betrayal--- but that’s not my whole story. When my tattoos are gone, and my bones are ash I want to be remembered for how much I loved not how many times I cried. “

In the moments where I feel most pushed to the limits, most stressed it is love that pulls me back from the brink. Love for and from my friends, community, extended chosen family all over the world, and most of all from my incredible partner who does things like spend all Sunday making homemade ice cream, and who right now every day tells me how proud ze is of how hard I’m working to find a job, and always how much ze loves me every single day. There are so many uncertainties in the world, and bad things happen all the time. You can drive yourself crazy obsessing and fearing them, or you can (or try to) just trust your love.....

Latest posts by Sassafras

• Farewell - May 1st, 2011
• Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme - April 16th, 2011
• Little Red Writing Dress - March 27th, 2011
• Unexpected Butch/Femme Poetry - March 22nd, 2011
• Tell-tale Signs a Queer Femme is Queer - March 4th, 2011