Leah and I were in love, and it was amazing. People said so. People said that love was powerful, and especially ours and we should harness it. They said we could do great things if we harnessed our love.

I always said yeah, we could, but Leah took it seriously. She looked into it, and found a website that explained how to use the power of love to run your home, and maybe the homes of others. The website called it pink energy, and it said that pink was the new green. We signed up and our love was fed into the grid.

It turned out that our love was powerful. Our love was so powerful we were able to power our entire block, and hydro gave us money every month. People didn’t believe us when we told them. They said they’d never seen anything like it. Leah checked the numbers, and we had the third most powerful love in the country. There was a couple in Scarborough and another one in Jonquière.

I said I didn’t think they should be releasing those numbers, and Leah said why not. She said didn’t I want to know where our love stood? I said I didn’t really, and Leah stroked my hair and said she was glad to know. She said we had the third strongest love in the entire country and there were thirty-some million people in the country, so third was pretty amazing. I said yeah, and I said she was right, but I couldn’t help thinking about it.

It meant that the couple in Scarborough and the couple in Jonquière were more in love than we were, and the couple from Scarborough had been number one or number two in the country every year for the eight years the program had been in existence, and I felt pressure to try and maintain our position.

Also, despite heavy advertising, only thirty-two percent of lovers were harnessing the power of their love, and so that was four more couples whose love was more powerful than ours, and maybe more. Some people said not giving a shit about the grid and the environment was the sign of a really intense love.

In our second year on the grid, the power of our love faded dramatically. The Scarborough love was back on top, and Jonquière was second, but we were forty-fourth, and we were getting way less money back on our bill. In November, after delivery and debt retirement charges, we owed twelve cents.

Leah asked me what was wrong. She said she was sure that she loved me as powerfully as ever, which meant either we were blocked, or I didn’t love her as much as I had before. I said I loved her as much as ever, and I didn’t know why our output had shrunk so much. I said maybe we just needed to get away for a bit or something.

Leah thought that was a good idea. She said money was tight for a vacation, but if it got us back to producing like we had before it would be worth it, and we went to Paris and London for two weeks.

After our vacation, our production went up, but it dipped again in March, and in April we wound up owing nine dollars and seventy-one cents.

I said the bill was bullshit, and maybe we should disconnect from the grid and pay for our electricity the same as everyone else. I said it wasn’t that we weren’t in love, it was the pressure of comparing our love to other people’s. Leah said that was absurd. She said we loved each other, right? She said harnessing that love was doing good in the world, and she wanted our love to do good in the world.

We stayed on the grid, but our production kept going down. In October we only produced six kilowatt hours of energy. Leah said that that wasn’t enough. She said clearly I didn’t love her anymore, or at least not enough, and that was affecting her love for me, and how could we be together without love?

I told Leah I still loved her. I said maybe I was just feeble. I said how could any love stay that powerful for that long, and Leah said the couple in Scarborough managed it.

Leah left me in January. She found a new boyfriend in June. Leah and her new boyfriend have the most powerful love in the country. They’ve produced more energy than any other love in the country five years running.

I’ve dated a few women since Leah. I always insist that we stay off the grid, because it ruins relationships, but it’s because I haven’t been that in love with any of them. If I was ever so in love that I thought I could challenge Leah and her boyfriend, I’d plug into the grid in a heartbeat, so Leah could know how it feels.