This Valentine’s Day, my object of love is the world, and what kind of a clear manageable object is that?
I could narrow it down, focus, make it a simple object, like an oyster, and use all of my five senses to explore its delicate being, its opalescent color, its sand and pearly shell
I might complicate things by thinking about the ocean, and how many people die in it every year, and how many sailors and fishermen have perished over centuries, how many in the Middle Passage, and wonder if I can still love the ocean
or that oyster that is its product and essence of the ocean itself
and I might be eating the oyster as I am listening to a roll call, to documentation of a country falling apart
eating at itself, indulging in fantasies, imposing fictions on phenomena that is watery and impossible to fix or order
and I might wonder how I can love that project too
or the oyster raised in a tainted original colony
but since I’m past the point of infatuation, not holding the world
to promises that it would laugh at if ever charged, I’ll keep witnessing, in all flavors and registers
all beauty and monsters that comes from the ocean