Love, Still

A small section of a chain-link fence, showing about a half-dozen of the squares formed by the chain’s wire. In one of the squares is an additional bit of wire, colored pink, shaped into cursive letters spelling out the word “love.” The ends of the additional wire, at the beginning of the L and the end of the E, are wrapped around the fence wire forming the square. The area behind the fence is blurry, and is an almost-uniform pale blue.

At the center—
not as softness, not as surrender—
but as gravity:
Love.

Love that bends the arc
of anger so it does not break us.
Love that holds grief
without asking it to hurry.
Love that looks despair in the face
and says, You may sit with me,
but you will not decide who I become.

We name the fire in our chests—
the rage that comes when shots ring out,
when uniforms sworn to protect
become symbols of fear,
when a nation turns its teeth
on people for simply existing.
Anger is not the enemy.
Anger is love’s alarm bell.
We attune—
then we choose what we build with it.

We grieve.
Not quietly. Not neatly.
We grieve the stolen futures,
the bodies turned into headlines,
the trust cracked open again and again.
Grief is love with nowhere to go—
so we give it somewhere:
candles, names, tears, marches,
the refusal to forget.

And when despair whispers
that nothing will change,
that cruelty is winning,
that the universe is cold—
we answer with Interdependence:
Your life is bound to mine.
No one is disposable.
No one suffers alone
unless we abandon them.

We answer with Equity:
Justice is not abstract.
It is breath protected,
bodies safe,
dignity made real.

We answer with Transformation:
What is broken can become different.
Not by denial,
but by courage and repair.

We answer with Pluralism:
There is more than one way to be human,
and every way deserves space to live.

We answer with Generosity:
We will keep giving ourselves
to hope, even when it costs.

We answer with Justice:
Love is not neutral.
Love takes sides
with the harmed, the hunted, the unheard.

And always, at the center—
not naïve, not passive—
Love that stays.
Love that resists.
Love that refuses to become
what it is fighting.

In a time when the country feels
like it is attacking its own body,
we choose to be the immune response—
not destroying,
but healing.

This is how we carry anger
without becoming it.
This is how we honor grief
without drowning.
This is how we journey through despair
and still extend our hands.

Love,
not as a feeling,
but as a practice.
Love,
still.