There is a no man's land between sex and love, and it alters in the night.

there in the night their bed had the towelly smell of marriage.

Two lovers kissing amongst the screams of midnight,
Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude.

Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they're not. When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing. They can stay together for hours, even days. They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or — such is the pleasure they experience — they may never finish it. No eleven minutes for them.

Love has the faculty of making two lovers seem naked, not in each other's sight, but in their own.

I think we made love three times that final summer. Made love! Preposterous euphemism for fucking, almost as bad as the most grotesque of all, slept together. Whatever Sundara and I made, in those three pressings of flesh to flesh, love couldn’t have been the commodity; we made sweat, we made rumpled sheets, we made heavy breathing, we even made orgasms, but love? Love?

It takes three to make love.

Once, lovers on faraway shores sat by candlelight and dipped ink to parchment, writing words that could not be erased. They took an evening to compose their thoughts, maybe the next evening as well.

"Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people's songs.

They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the "blaze of passion" often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet. Perhaps their surrounding world, the strangers they met in the street, the wide expanses they saw on their walks, the rooms in which they lived or met, took more delight in their love than they themselves did."

Journeys end in lovers meeting

They sang their mysterious duo, sang of their nameless hope, their death-in-love, their union unending, lost forever in the embrace of night's magic kingdom. O sweet night, everlasting night of love! Land of blessedness whose frontiers are infinite!

Love is from another realm. We cannot manufacture it on demand. Nor can we subdue it when it appears. Love is not our choice to make.

Amy, Tiffany and I sat in the kitchen and talked until three thirty this morning. One of the things we laughed about was an old episode of The Newlywed Game. The host asked the wives, "What's the most exotic place you've ever made love?" He was likely expecting "The kitchen" or "On a tennis court at night," but one woman didn't quite understand the question and answered, "In the butt."

We made eyes at each other, and then we made love. We also made other things too, like meatloaf.