The Dictionary, Page Five

Worship comprises the fifth page of the dictionary of my submission, what words mean to me in the context of Tasdron Dryke.  Worship means, to me, a great big bowl of hyperbole -- exaggeration, excess, wanton slathering of meaning over something so ordinary as love.  And it's all I have, sometimes.  Sometimes, that great big bowl of excess and "too much" is all I have, so far away.  It makes it easier to bear, to use such words.  Too much, more than, ever in this whole world.

It makes it easier to conceive of "no ordinary love" when I imagine how I worship you (like a king) and how I adore you (like a Christ) and how I prostrate myself before you (like a Messiah).

Really it means that I obey you (like a king) and I listen to you (like a Christ) and I submit myself before you (like a Messiah).  You are not a king; you are of the same class as I am.  You are not a Christ; you are just clever, thoughtful, and ready to give love.  And you are not a messiah; you are American, brave, and free.  I know the reality of you; and yet, whenever we speak or whenever I feel close to you even if there is no speaking, despite the reality that I know (and I too am real, and I too know the vast gap between the statue on the plinth and the woman who keeps it pretty) I am compelled, time and again, to fall to my knees and look up to you and sing your praises as though I were a choir of hundreds of voices.  More hyperbole!  But it is as if, and therefore it is.  I think, therefore I worship.

It makes me feel good to know you are in the world.  And it makes me feel good to know that you can hear me.  It makes me feel good that you let me in, on days when you aren't filling my world with you, so that I can fill your world with me.  I lean on you.  You lean on me.  And I am blessed for it.  (And now I know why I chose this picture, and before that, why you chose this pose.)

"Worship" is just a word I use, sometimes, to indicate the way in which my imagination elevates you beyond the ordinary.  It is a word I use sometimes to indicate that, despite the reality of our worlds, my fantasy is to occupy a world where I may lift you so high with how much I love, and where you may bring me with you with how much you love.  You lean on me, and I lean on you, and this is how it works.  It reinforces the electrical current of the power we exchange; it doesn't sap it.