Love Leads to...

The pale desert stretches out before me. Other than a cactus and well, nothing can be seen for miles and miles around. The only sound to be heard is the hot western wind whipping past, rushing to the east. The sun beats down, burning my skin and cracking my lips. I think the heat is getting to my head because I don’t know where I’m going or where I’m coming from.

Licking my lips, I squint at the well in the distance and I see a small shape perched on the well. I start walking towards it, stumbling occasionally.

The closer I get to the well, the farther away it seems.

Once I get there, I look back at my footprints and notice that when I had stumbled, I had really gone far to the left or the right and made my journey here much longer than it had to be. For some reason I felt immeasurably sad about this.

I turned to face the well and saw that the shape was an old woman leaning against the well, rocking back and forth mumbling nonstop. She was an odd looking creature, with a deeply lined face, a hooked nose, cracked lips like mine and she was dressed entirely in black.

I couldn’t hear what she was saying so I moved closer.

“Love… love… love… love…”

She just kept mumbling “love” over and over again. I looked at her face very carefully and saw that she had dry tear streaks all over her old face. Upon closer inspection it became clear that she had been sitting there for a long time. Dry blood ran from her cracked lip, her cheeks were sunken as though she had not eaten for a long time and her eyes had a large build up of sleep.

So intent was I in my inspection that I actually screamed and leapt back when the woman jerked awake. It took her a moment to open her eyes because of all the sleep built up, but when she did she croaked. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” I replied.

The woman narrowed her eyes at me. “No one’s doing nothing.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then I asked. “Excuse me, but why were you saying love?”

Looking extremely suspicious, the woman said. “I wasn’t saying love.”

“Yes, you were. In your sleep, just now.”

“Never mind what people say in their sleep. Dreams are for fools. Just like love.”

“But…”

“No buts!” croaked the woman. “Are you in love?”

I thought for a moment. “I don’t know.”

“Avoid love. Trust me on this one, dearie. No one loves truly. Love leads to loss. Love leads to loss.” The woman began closing her eyes, falling back to sleep.
“Love leads to… love leads… love… love… love…”

The woman was as I had found her once again.