“I Love You”

photo by arantxa villa

“I Love You”

fourth year srija sengupta

“I love you.”

Do you. Do you really? Do you even know what those words mean?

Because those words, that little phrase, means everything and nothing.

It means everything to the young teenager, the flush of his first love spilling over his cheeks as they stammer over the phrase and clumsily shove flowers into his hands. A bouquet of slightly crushed daisies picked up on the way to school. His heart soars, and he flings himself into their arms, daisies pressed between their hearts.

It means nothing to the jaded woman with glazy-glass eyes. Pretty as a doll, she is, and empty as one too. Her boyfriend comes up, the words flowing so smoothly, too smoothly, off his lips as he hands her a bouquet of twelve, picture-perfect roses, the pinnacle of romance. As he swoops in to steal a customary kiss, she can’t help but notice the sliver of dark lip paint on his collar, a mockery of a kiss.

It means everything to the old woman, looking out the balcony to watch the tide come in. Her wife comes up behind her, hands and face as wrinkled as hers, and whispers the oft-said, always-meant phrase into her ear. She turns around, slowly now, she isn’t as young as she was when they first met, but her eyes are as bright as ever. Even without the small hearing aid lying by their bedside table, she knows the shape of those words intimately, and she brings up her hands to whisper it back.

It means nothing to the man who stares at his phone in the dark. The movie came out yesterday, and already his fans are sending him plenty of messages. Most of them contain those three words, always screaming, screaming, screaming-

He clutches his phone and listlessly walks over to the balcony, where the city lights are so bright they seem like stars themselves (it’s fake, all fake, like him). He stares at the lights above him, and wishes upon those fake stars for just one person to whisper instead.

“I love you,” you say.

But what does it mean to me?