Like red paint on canvas, carefully stroked and with a slight touch of white. A piece of art, in the shape of a heart, you can feel the emotion by following the motion of the brush-strokes. Not heavy, but there is a lot of weight to it, not hard, just firm and deliberate. Yes, this heart drawn was heart-felt. When I see it I can only think of love, I can only wonder how deep those brush strokes went into that canvas, I mean, how deep this love really is. My officiousness leads me to imagine what love really looks like, when you take off the red paint, beneath the resplendent surface, what does it look like. So I undress it a little, and now we're left with the canvas. Now, when I look at love, it looks like your pair of beautiful brown eyes wandering across a crowded room, colliding with mine. Immediately, we're blinded to all else in the room, and all that our eyes can see is themselves in each other, and each other in themselves. Love looks like, you and I, walking, hand in hand in the warm breeze on a beautiful summer evening, down the path of life, barefoot of course, because, what's the point of walking on rose petals if they don't touch your feet. Love looks like a field of daisies, pansies and lilies, you & I, a couple of butterflies and the setting sun, on that day we sat on the park bench and you fed me strawberries, and as your finger rested on my lip, I couldn't get the softness of your touch off my mind. And I don't even like strawberries, but I eat them now, hungrily, and remember that moment, that touch. I like what this kind of love looks like, but this is only skin-deep. I want to go deeper so I peel the canvas off, step back and take a good look at love. Your love. Looks like, you, frustrated with my stubbornness, tired of repeating yourself, only to find that you're patient enough to tell me one more time. Love, yes, my love looks like, me waiting tirelessly for you to get dressed, even after you've changed your outfit 3 times already and the show starts in 19 minutes. Our love looks like, us fussing and fighting for three hours, until we both look at each other, smile and realise that we've both forgotten what we're fussing about anyways. This love looks like me, sitting in my room, thinking about you at 3:08am, and I haven't had a wink of sleep yet. Yet, I want to go deeper still, beneath the flesh, right down to the core, I want to see the more, much more, deeper than the frame that holds love up. Now love looks like me sitting right here, right now trying to figure out how much I really love you, because you said something hurtful yesterday. I don't know how you could ever think I don't pay attention to you. I know it takes you 2 seconds after you open the door to say, "honey, I'm home." And 9 seconds, after you take your shoes off, you plant a kiss on my left cheek in the middle of the kitchen floor. I know you always skip the second step when you go up or down the stairs because that's the step that our cat died on. You, don't pick the apples off your favorite tree anymore ever since we buried our son's hamster under it. I know, I turn my head to the door at least 16 times when i'm expecting you home after your work-out. I know even though you put on a brave front, you can't fall asleep unless you can feel my breath on your skin. It takes you 6 seconds to exhale completely when you're scared, and I know that where ever we go together, I don't like to be more than 60 seconds away from where you are. At the end of the day, I come to a point when I want to take a good look at love, so lets put the flesh back on, cover it up with the skin, dress it back up and, coat it with that red paint. And see what love looks like. Love looks like you, in a red dress, like the red paint, with a white ribbon tied around the waist, holding my hand, looking into my eyes, and me, looking so deep into yours, I see past your red dress, past the red paint. Even deeper, past your beautiful skin, past the canvas. Deeper yet, past the frame, past the bones. And there it is, it looks like your heart beating, and me clinging onto you for dear-life because you're th only one of you I have, so let me look at you, let me love you. How much do I love you? let me count the ways. I love you for numberless nights, upon numberless days.

-Inspired by Steve C.