A Certain Hunger

by Chelsea G. Summers

We talk about love like it’s an involuntary act. We fall into love, like a hole, a puddle, an elevator shaft. We never step mindfully into love. Love, we seem to think, requires a loss of control; love necessitates that vertiginous giving over to gravity; love wants you to have no choice. Your heart thumps because there’s danger and adrenaline in love. You lose yourself in love because you’ve displaced yourself. But dating sites and yentas, arranged marriages and speed dating, advice columns and blind dates, all argue that love is something we can manage, a losing that we can find. I suppose that if you walk into a minefield, you’re more likely to explode; if you walk a country lane in the dark, you’re more likely to trip; and if you put yourself in the path of dating, you’re more likely to fall in love. I maintain that love can’t simultaneously be an accident and a premeditated act, yet we treat it as if it is. It’s a necessary fiction, love’s oxymoronic nature. Love’s a contranym as sharp as “cleave” and twice as dangerous.