"How You Know" by Joe Mills

How You Know
by Joe Mills

How do you know if it’s love? she asks, 
and I think if you have to ask, it’s not, 
but I know this won’t help. I want to say 
you’re too young to worry about it,
as if she has questions about Medicare 
or social security, but this won’t help either. 
“You’ll just know” is a lie, and one truth, 
“when you still want to be with them 
the next morning,” would involve too 
many follow-up questions. The difficulty 
with love, I want to say, is sometimes 
you only know afterwards that it’s arrived 
or left. Love is the elephant and we 
are the blind mice unable to understand 
the whole. I want to say love is this 
desire to help even when I know I can’t, 
just as I couldn’t explain electricity, stars, 
the color of the sky, baldness, tornadoes, 
fingernails, coconuts, or the other things 
she has asked about over the years, all 
those phenomena whose daily existence 
seems miraculous. Instead I shake my head. 
I don’t even know how to match my socks. 
Go ask your mother. She laughs and says, 
I did. Mom told me to come and ask you.

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