By Miya Mastrofini
Edited by Amy Li and Alloe Mak

Notes From the Inside of the Venus Shell

Dear dove, 

You brought me to words. I hope you are reading this.

*

Introduction: 

Writing about love has consistently been difficult for me, and thus I hardly ever do it. It is not an easy thing for me to understand. Everybody is constantly thinking about love, but opinions on it are without fail, contradictory, diluted, and incomprehensible. It is a very large thing to cram into four letters. As an ex-hater of songs, books, and movies about romance, for a while, the idea of making a meaningful contribution to the mangled mess of media on Love was Sisyphean. But as I grow, I learn more and more about this so often depicted thing. I think I now understand it better, or at least its incredible value. I am less shy when it comes to it.

As follows is a kind-of-essay on Love. 

*

1: Treasure box

Sometimes I line up all the sea glass and shells and fossil-embedded pebbles I’ve collected and think that at another time, I was kinder. The light refracts and glints off them and I find myself grieving. As a child, I would carefully pick through rocks at the beach for coloured shells, rummage through leaves in search for the perfect acorn, or some other prize. I’d place these items in a zippered pocket and cart them home, finding them a place in my little box of treasures. I would cherish them as I imagine a mother would her child. They would gleam in my eyes and my heart. Sometimes I would hold them tight in my hands and against my lips and let their beauty seep under my skin. 

An alternate opinion would state that this makes younger me a hoarder, and my former time-for-shells doesn’t translate directly to love. Nevertheless, I still sometimes wonder if I had then understood how to love better than I do now. It is easier to do so when all you have to love is your mum and your dad, and the pretty pearlescent shells you collect. Simpler times are inevitably admired in a romantic light— I never shared my treasures with anybody. Perhaps this is the wrong type of love. 

I have been reluctant to give Myself the same way I have these beach trinkets. My love too has been carefully wrapped in tissue and stored in a similar kind of treasure box. I have habitually been careful to conserve it, constantly worried that one day I’ll reach into my box and fingers will sweep over an empty velvet expanse. That my love will be forever lost. This has protected me: I still have many of my old treasures, and they still gleam when the light hits them right. I fear the pain of being empty or devoid of love. So I remain somewhat of a hoarder.

I am still undecided on whether this is the Right or the Wrong thing to do. 

2: The End of Everything

The kitchen is filled with yellow light and a very-distant-past me touches the varnished wood back of the breakfast table chair. I have just been told that Everything Ends. 

“Even this? It’s not even living.” I feel cheated. Of course I do. I am so young that death is unfathomable. Not something that could touch my world. 

My dad smiles. “Of course. Everything dies eventually, in some way or another.”

I think about the chair in the back of a garbage truck, then sitting in a landfill. I think about the chair when it breaks apart and when so little of it is left that nobody will ever remember it is my chair, and nobody will recognize it, and nobody will even see anything there at all. 

I think about my funeral, and my ashes, and my End. It is not as bad as I had expected.

And so everything ends. For a very long time, I hold this with me. 

3: Big picture

Everybody is talking about love all the time, but sometimes I feel like they’re missing the big picture. There are over 100 million songs written about love. Statistically, 67% of lyrics in every song are- in some way or another- about love. How many of them really mean something? How many of these people have felt actual real love? Maybe I am just a cynic or bitter or something. Who am I to decide what love can or cannot be? I don’t know. 

When it comes to love, we (myself included) treasure our metaphors. Love is (..?). Fill in the blank. 

I appreciate the prolificacy in poetic representation of love; love is a beautiful thing and should be treated as such, but again, sometimes the big picture is lost. You try to understand love through how your boyfriend cuts pomegranates. Or the sun and the moon. Or cannibalism. Ew. I especially dislike that analogy, but I have always been squeamish when it comes to anthropophagy. Sometimes a fruit is just a fruit. I feel like this is the wrong opinion to have as a writer. 

The Greeks had eight words for different kinds of love. The poets would appreciate this. I don’t know if constantly examining the little strands of love is the right idea. We are all so forlorn! Although, it is a lot to have to consider when we look at it all at once. It is easier to feel reflected in one of Love’s facets. 

But again, sometimes we forget about the big picture. 

4: Funeral March

Everybody around me is perpetually mourning. They mourn things that aren’t even dead yet. Sometimes I have dreams where all the dead things from my life are back, all perfect and lined up on my front lawn. I am a little bit of a Mourner myself.

I just want to feel alive again

Oh, please. You are alive. Your blood rushes and your heart thumps and everything sways in the same wind. Why can’t you remember that? 

I miss my family, I miss my home

You are already home.

We kill more things than we notice. We swat flies in the bathroom. We gut and stuff our past selves. Then we cry, then we miss, then we mourn. 

Who gave me the power to Destroy so much? Who gave me the conscience to regret? 

Please stop looking at the ground. Please stop wearing black. You’re missing it all.

I promise to be less of a Mourner.

5:

Interlude: Two heads. My shot at a metaphor

Two-headed lamb is a portent for disaster. Bad luck, bad luck, bad luck. Two-headed calves only come once every 400 million babies. But poems are written about them. This is a plus, even though they’ll last less than a month. Two-headed snakes can live longer. If I was snake head 1 and you were snake head 2, I would go left and you would go right and we would split right down the middle. One heart is not enough. Two-headed rabbits only come post-mortem. In another time this would be called witchcraft, or sin or something. Sometimes there are two-headed cats. Two chins for scratching. Hooray! There was a two-headed partridge once. This is God x2. There was a two-headed albino rat snake and they called it “We”. We had two heads and one heart.

Snake head 1: Is this an analogy for love?

Snake head 2: Are we in love?

Snake head 1: I think I’ll go left now.

Snake head 2: This is a stupid analogy. It’s too obvious. Everybody is hurting all at once. 

Lamb heads one and two say nothing. 

6: Ode to Ouroboros

Whenever I think about Ouroboros I begin to see circles everywhere. Teacup stain, your eye, wreath. Tail in mouth, He is Eternity and Unity. He is Everywhere. I hold my feet in my hands and make a circle too, except I don’t feel eternal, just silly.

Ouroborus is in a constant state of devouring and rebirth, which isn’t too far off from what we do to ourselves. We call it growth. Constantly ending some past version of ourselves and replacing it with the new and improved version. This isn’t bad, of course, but sometimes we Kill things we never should have gotten rid of in the first place. And then we mourn. A heavy hand tends to make too many graves. Don’t take Ouroborus’ methods too literally.

Here is an Alternate Option: 

Find that field again. You know which one I’m talking about. Find at least one other person you love. As many people as you can is best, but One is perfectly okay too. Hold their hands in your hands. Stretch your arms wide. Make a circle. Everything swells.

Maybe this is what Ouroborus was thinking of.

7: Theories and whatnot

In seventh grade science, I learn about The Law of Conservation of Mass. Matter is conserved through change: the same amount of matter exists before and after- none can be created or destroyed. 

At some point, I read that some of the atoms in your body once belonged to Shakespeare. It sounds a little dubious at first, but then it is explained that Earth recycles its atoms. Cool.  

I don’t know it yet, but later these things will all be very important. 

8: You were always the poet

In a letter I wrote to someone I once loved, but never had a chance to send, I say that ‘most of all, I love the way you create and fill me’. At the end of the day, we all just want to feel Whole. We want to wrap our arms around someone and squeeze and squeeze until your skin is their skin and their body is your body and We are One. 

At our eventual End, everyone leaves alone. This scares people more than the actual leaving. This is why people believe in God and heaven. When was the last time you were alone? Like I mean, really, really alone? I feel lonely sometimes, but never alone. If death was known to be a mix of both, a permanent suspension in vast blackness, there’d be mass panic. Nobody can handle the thought of that. 

We love in order to be a part of something. We are not solitary creatures. This is important, so important- to be part of a bigger whole.

You are thinking that there are too many different things to love. I don’t think so. It’ll make sense eventually. 

Keep writing your letters. Send them one day. 

9:

Interlude 2: Take a breather, man!

Go find all the sea glass you collected as a child and line them up on your windowsill. The light shines through them the same way the sun shines in the eyes of the girl you love. How different are they really? Finish your apple. Plant the seeds in the yard. It will grow, and keep growing if you let it. The rabbits curl together in their warren like you in your parents’ bed on stormy nights. 

I just want to go home

You’re home already. Remember.

Your chest rises and falls the same as the tides. Your heart beats like every other animal. Hands, feet, roots, beaks, snail shells and the crinkles around your eyes. Sea floor. Fingernails. Figs and your lips. Four-leaf clover. Your spine. The insides of clam shells. Sand is just kaleidoscope crystals when you look at it up close. Willow tree. Glassy eye. Glitter in the snow. Sun and fingertips. Rabbit heart, your heart.

You’re home already.

Remember.

Remember.

Everything breathes all at once.

10: Zenaida macroura

I no longer think that all things have a Final End. Remember: matter cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. When I bury the dove that hit my window it is dead, but it hasn’t really ended. Maybe next spring something will grow in that spot. 

Everything is in a constant state of growth. Many things are dead now but that does not mean that they are at their Final End.

This is not a complete thought. Chuck the apple core. 

11: Voice, life, bird; this is for you

Hands and tongues and eyes and feet and two heartbeats in perfect sync. We have sewn ourselves so irrevocably tight. This is God x2. This is perfect. This is Ouroboros. This is whole. Put your hands inside my head and I will put mine in yours. Put your face in my face. Pinky swear. Write me letters. I will write you ones that say essentially the same thing. I remember how to be in love, I know how to love. Thank you. Thank you. This is the only way I know how to do this. The Earth opens up and swallows us whole. 

This is still a jumbled mess. That’s okay. Everything is perfect anyway.

12: The Beginning

All things are one. Remember that and you will be okay. You will open your eyes one day and get it. You will open your eyes one day and know how to love. 

Feel it. Hands on the tree trunk. Sea glass that is so uncannily your eyes. Ankle deep in the Earth. I see my shells everywhere. You are alive.  All things are one, you are All things. 

Love beats and breathes in all the seams when we remember that.