They’d waited too long to say

“I love you”.

3 words. 3 syllables.

Yet they held millions of emotions unspoken.

and now that they’d done it, they wouldn’t,
couldn’t, stop

they told each other all the time, at the end of the argument
and before the good news.

In the middle of the storm, even though it was hard to see, and after, when the raging winds had settled on a breeze

before the rising sun turned the sky pretty colors and after it flickered out and faded away into the dark

Underneath the stars that their love had been etched into

There was no love until death for them, because it would never stop

I love you beyond

Princes and princesses in aprons and suits,
Pirates on ships in the clouds,
Half-forgotten hopes and dreams,
And a vow of patience --

Scribbled in a 15 year old notebook,
In green felt pen,
In joined up handwriting, summed up in a phrase:
‘Wait for the stars to align.’

When Mars came hard and the moon turned its back
I forgot that notebook, and its plea,
When love found its way through to the eye of the storm,
And I accepted its course with a bitter tack --

I didn’t care for that notebook, and its caution
When all was in shadow, and
love’s bitter fruit wrought its sweet poison.
Paralysed by fear of loss and the barren vine.

I found a cure in the darkest sea
Beyond despair,
Beyond hope,
Of a promise made long ago.

Of a silver notebook
And green felt pen
In joined up handwriting
'Wait for the stars to align.'

And I did.