The Trees and the Passion

"I love you."
"No you don't."
"Yes I do."
"How do you know?"
The breeze blew lazily, gently shuffling the leaves in the trees across the park. The gold, orange, and red leaves danced gracefully as the sun, high in the sky, glittered through the trees. The man and woman were the only people in the park. They sat at opposite sides of a wooden bench in front of a field of tall, dying grass, bordered by a forest of full autumn foliage. The man looked down, brow furrowed as the woman looked at him, patience, questioning. The man spoke as a breeze blew in.
“I don’t know.” His words were lost in the wind.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
The man looked ahead at the tree line.
“There are so many things in life I’m not certain of. So many things to question; I don’t even know who I am.”
“Then how can you be so certain you love me?”
“Because knowledge and feeling are separate entities.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Knowledge is a product of the mind alone. When we feel we know something, it is in our brains, our minds. We can describe it and put words to it easily. A feeling is an experience involving the entirety of our body. Take happiness for example. We know what it is we’re feeling; the lightness of body, contentment of mind, but we can never articulate the true nature of the feeling because it transcends words in its subjectivity.”
“How can you know that you have a feeling and describe what it is if it’s so indescribable?”
“We’re dealing with uncertainties still. When we get to this point, we have to take a risk and attempt to define these things as best as possible for ourselves. In order to have a reason to live, we have to fill our uncertainties with our own ideas, our beliefs.”
The man paused. He looked to his left as the woman shuffled closer. He studied the woman’s face; intent, questioning, thoughtful...beautiful. The wind shifted her hair slightly, blowing a few strands in front of her eyes, freeing him from their hold. He reached to her and took one of her hands in his nervously.
“We can live our lives in total scepticism,” the man continued with a sigh, “questioning things we’ll never have the answers to. Or we can make our own reality, answer our own unanswerables, create for ourselves a reason to live. I’ve taken the risk in my definition of love. How do I know what love is? I don’t know for certain. To me, this is what I feel love must be. Whatever I feel right now has to be the truest representation of the feeling, no matter how subjective it is.”
“I love you.”
The man exhaled and looked to the sky. The colours of the sunset blended with the tops of the trees, creating a line of fire as far as he could see. He dropped his head and stared at the dying grass at his feet. The woman shifted closer again, pressed her lips lightly to his shoulder and whispered:
“I love you too.”