You know how big love is? Love is big. love can hold anger; love

Host: The evening was heavy and humid, the kind that makes the air feel like breath — thick, slow, and intimate. The porch light flickered above them, casting uneven halos across the peeling paint of an old Southern house. Somewhere beyond the trees, cicadas sang their endless hymn of longing.

Jack sat on the steps, sleeves rolled up, hands clasped, a glass of bourbon sweating beside him. Jeeny leaned against the porch post, barefoot, her long hair pulled back loosely, her eyes dark and glinting in the half-light. Between them, silence — the kind that stretches not from distance, but from everything unspoken.

Jeeny: “Alice Walker once said, ‘You know how big love is? Love is big. Love can hold anger; love can even hold hatred.’”

Host: Jack exhaled slowly, the sound mixing with the night’s breath.

Jack: “You quoting Walker means we’re about to get dangerous.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “Not dangerous. Honest.”

Jack: “Same thing.”

Host: The wind stirred, the faint rustle of magnolia leaves moving like whispered arguments.

Jack: “Love holding hatred — that’s poetic, but it’s not logical. If you hate someone, you’ve already cracked the structure.”

Jeeny: “No, you’ve just made it real. Love that can’t hold anger or hatred isn’t love. It’s infatuation — the temporary illusion before truth moves in.”

Jack: “You’re saying love survives contradiction.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. I’m saying love requires contradiction. The capacity to hold opposites without collapsing. That’s what makes it divine.”

Host: He turned the glass slowly in his hand, the bourbon catching the last of the sunset — amber, trembling, dangerous.

Jack: “You think that’s why people stay in painful relationships? Because they confuse endurance for depth?”

Jeeny: “Sometimes. But sometimes endurance is depth. Love isn’t purity — it’s persistence. It’s what remains after rage, after disappointment, after everything you swore would destroy it.”

Jack: “So love is masochism.”

Jeeny: “No. It’s expansion. The ability to hold pain and still choose tenderness.”

Host: A pause. The screen door creaked behind them as the wind shifted.

Jack: “I’ve never been good at that. When I’m angry, I want distance. I don’t want to love the person I’m furious at.”

Jeeny: “That’s because you think love should protect you from anger. But love isn’t a shield, Jack. It’s a container.”

Jack: “A container for what? Pain?”

Jeeny: “For humanity. All of it — the beauty and the brutality. Walker understood that love isn’t fragile; it’s elastic. It stretches to hold the contradictions that make us real.”

Host: He stared out at the trees, the bourbon untouched now, voice quieter.

Jack: “You ever think love breaks people more than it heals them?”

Jeeny: “Only when they try to make it small. When they demand it fit neatly between forgiveness and perfection.”

Jack: “And you? You think you’ve loved that big?”

Jeeny: “Once.” (pause) “And it hurt. But it was alive.”

Host: The cicadas’ song grew louder — an almost unbearable chorus of persistence.

Jack: “You talk like love’s a universe. Infinite, messy, expanding.”

Jeeny: “It is. That’s why it can hold hate. Hate’s just another form of passion. It’s love’s shadow — proof that you once cared deeply enough to burn.”

Jack: “You sound like someone defending fire to someone who’s been burned.”

Jeeny: “Maybe I am.”

Host: The night deepened — stars flickered weakly above the treeline. Jeeny moved closer, sitting beside him on the steps.

Jeeny: “Walker wasn’t romanticizing pain. She was dignifying complexity. She knew that to love truly is to love through — not around.”

Jack: “Through what?”

Jeeny: “Through fury, betrayal, resentment. Through the parts of each other we wish didn’t exist. Through the moments you can’t even look at someone — and still, something in you whispers stay.”

Host: Jack ran a hand through his hair, exhaling like a man surrendering to memory.

Jack: “That’s too heavy. I used to think love was supposed to make life easier.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. It’s supposed to make life truer.”

Host: He turned to her then, the porch light trembling, catching the faint glimmer of vulnerability in both their faces.

Jack: “So love’s not peace.”

Jeeny: “No. It’s capacity.”

Jack: “Capacity for what?”

Jeeny: “For contradiction. For truth. For forgiveness that doesn’t erase pain, but transforms it.”

Host: The wind shifted again. Somewhere in the distance, thunder murmured — not yet a storm, but the promise of one.

Jack: “I’ve loved like that — once. It didn’t feel divine. It felt like surviving a hurricane.”

Jeeny: “That’s what it is. Love is weather — unpredictable, necessary, vast. It destroys, but it also feeds the earth it ruins.”

Jack: “And if it doesn’t come back?”

Jeeny: “Then it leaves you bigger than before.”

Host: The thunder came closer now — slow and rhythmic, like the sky’s own heartbeat.

Jack: “You really believe love can hold hatred?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Because love isn’t the opposite of hate. The opposite of hate is indifference. Love is the only thing strong enough to look hate in the face and not disappear.”

Jack: “That sounds holy.”

Jeeny: “It is. Walker wrote about it because she knew — holiness isn’t clean. It’s complicated. It bleeds.”

Host: Lightning flashed briefly across the field beyond, illuminating their silhouettes — two figures framed by the edge of storm and stillness.

Jack: “So love is big enough to hold everything?”

Jeeny: “Everything that matters.”

Jack: “Even the things we regret?”

Jeeny: “Especially those.”

Host: The first drops of rain began to fall, soft against the wood. Neither of them moved.

Jeeny: “Love’s not about avoiding the storm, Jack. It’s about sitting through it — together — knowing it won’t wash the feeling away, only reveal what can’t be drowned.”

Jack: “And what’s that?”

Jeeny: “Faith. Not the blind kind — the bruised kind.”

Host: Jack nodded slowly, eyes on the rain. The bourbon glass was now half-filled with water, the line between fire and sky blurred.

He spoke softly — not to her, but to the night:

Jack: “Maybe Walker was right. Maybe love isn’t about being good. Maybe it’s about being vast enough to hold everything that isn’t.”

Jeeny: “Now you’re learning.”

Host: The camera pulled back — rain falling heavier, porch light flickering, the world reduced to breath, warmth, and sound. Two souls sitting in the storm, not to escape the world, but to feel all of it — together.

And through the rhythm of thunder and silence, Alice Walker’s truth lingered — eternal, human, forgiving:

“Love is not small. It is the universe learning to forgive itself — again and again — for being both light and shadow.”