Love exiles the heart from being, sometimes reluctantly, and other times in broad daylight. It is masterful in myriad ways; piercing, then transforming the lover, completely removing him from anything previously palpable and familiar. In a bewitching way, love alters consciousness and determines its decisions. He is the facilitator of exile from oneself, and is brilliantly woven into the lives of the characters in DH Lawrence's The Smell of Chrysanthemums and Carlos Fuentes' Aura; albeit sometimes in an antagonistic way. I identified with the characters in these plays as their secrets were scattered across the pages. I was amazed by the similarities between their world and mine; the resentment that stirred within me when my tears equaled those of Elisabetta in Smell of Chrysanthemums, and the echo of my not too distant past fomented by the hallucinations of the tormented Felipe Montero in Aura. It became apparent to me that, with the audacity of God himself, Lawrence had simply torn a page from the story of my life eighty-five years before it was written; that Fuentes had looked into my eyes before they were conceived. Obviously they never knew me, but we share a common point between their stories and my existence; surrender to exile from oneself because of love. In The Smell of Chrysanthemums, Elizabeth Bates is the naive wife in a loveless marriage masquerading as family and convention. She had fostered a world around her husband's addiction, but it was a world deeply rooted in shaky truth, not reality. Her life was concrete in the truth that her improvised love had fostered, isolating her from what an agape love would have revealed. Lawrence paints Elizabeth as a stern mother and angry wife, who, the next evening... middle of paper... are usually welcome, but are often noticeable nonetheless. It becomes insolent and presumptuous, forcing uncertainty and sallow pain on those who dare reach its depths, leaving a residual taste that is bittersweet in reflection. Like Elizabeth and Felipe, I too felt the aching sting and warm sensation of the truth coming to light. I am a Lazarus of the epic of love and I have felt the ruin of his desire; survive to reflect on my exile in these pages, which I believe are my air correspondence.Works CitedFuentes, Carlos. "Aura." Magical Realist Fiction: An Anthology. Ed. David Young and Keith Holloman. New York, NY: Longman, Inc., 1984. 393-417. Print.Lawrence, DH. "Smells like chrysanthemums." Magical Realist Fiction: An Anthology. Ed. David Young and Keith Holloman. New York, NY: Longman, Inc., 1984. 99-115. Press.