Until the day I am able to sleep next to you, my hand held in yours softly
Underneath billowy sheets, hidden beneath baby-soft blankets like school children
Your chest, slowly rising and lowering with each breath you
Inhale
Exhale, serves as my head rest, with your hand sweetly, yet safely atop my cheek bone

The steady metronome that resides under your rib cage resonates across the surface area of my skin and rattles the bones of my inner ear

The heat we create draws precipitation out of my pores

I stencil hearts, swirls, circles on your forearm with my freshly painted fingernails as you drift into the realm of dreams
I follow along shortly, all the while sharing my most sincere love for you, which kindles warmth under the comforters

I linger as long as humanly possible, for who would rather dream, than live their dreams
Where sight, sounds and smells create paintings on canvases, capturing memories


Until This day, one can only visualize

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the journey is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
may there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbours seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.