Air

Gibran is describing a love with no grip in it. The pillars of a temple stand apart, he says, and the oak does not grow in the cypress's shadow.

We are taught the opposite. That love is closeness, that space is a warning sign, that the ideal is two people who cannot be told apart.

But the couples who make it to forty years have air between them. Two people who could each stand alone, choosing every morning not to. Hold the person. Do not hold on.