'Katrina's wings'

I do not recall which day that God created love. But Sister Bickle had told me more than once that He demonstrated it and gave man the ability to exercise it, which tells me that God's never-changing character embodies this ethereal nature called love. Always has. He owns it. He is love. And everything He touched left traces of it all over the earth, an elixir that smelled good to girls and caused boys to lose their ever-loving minds.

It made me believe that if God had handed each person - say Adam and Eve, for starters - a little box and said, "Now here's your portion of love. Don't spend it all in one place," man would have taken his box. But instead of handing it over to his mate, he would have poured it out all over his puny, quivering, naked body as he danced in paradise and shouted to Eve, "Look at me, I'm in love, I'm in love," while Eve just shook her head and said, "You certainly are, Adam. Have a good time without me."

But God allowed little potent traces of love to inhabit us in places where we could not extract it and use it for our own selfish purposes. We could only give it away. Therein lies the essence of heartache - the pain of what ensues thereafter.

And that is what robbed me of sleep.