I love you
in many ways,
not just
one.

I have washed up on your shore,
risen above and into your blue skies,
heard the visions of truth and future
in the ways you call my name;
you are my soul companion.
I need you in ever-present ways,
your constant grace and kindness to be held,
an effervescent stone moored in the
ever-changing seas of our life.
I beg of you, with all of the hope that I have,
I'll place myself at your mercy,
to accept my rugged and broken ways,
please,
as you have matched my desires
and shown me what your love must hold for me.
Let me cover you under warm blankets,
enveloped in love's rough passion,
pull your being into mine,
and ******* name
as it escapes from
your lips.

The gravity of grief is
raw and mighty
and we're often caught
standing like mountains;
broken heels pressed
into pebbles,
waiting to be forged
into something solid.
Trapped in
this long exposure -
a muted stillness
from the world,
it tells us we're
accountable for our absence
like it doesn't know
it was the one that held us
paralyzed;
a hostage to the void
and without light

Yet still we rise,
we fight to capture
maybe a glimpse of light
beaming from the sky,
giving life to our
eternal suffering,
giving warmth and
drying our futile tears.
We stand taller,
than these peaks,
having been taken down
into treacherous valleys,
bleeding into the soil
our ravished skin
will eventually heal,
and on our knees
we lift our eyes
in search of the
most divine truth.

Find the hardest possible thing
you could do,
and do that,
the heaviest possible thing
you could lift,
and lift that,
the most taxing responsibility
in your grasp,
and take that on.

Do you think it is by pure chance
that warriors are forged in fire?
What of their blood sacrifices?

Challenge your barriers;
do not let them sit indeterminable.

Life is not the pursuit of happiness;
life is the pursuit of the cessation of suffering.

Do you think love is a blessing?
In some ways, perhaps,
but let's not forget the responsibility
we must bear
when another soul is entrusted to us.
What greater compliment is there than that?
To say, you, no matter your faults and troubles,
you are the person in which I will spend my life with,
come hell, come the high waters of the flood,
you are the only one I want.

And to bear children, to bring children into
a dismal world such as this,
filled with wretched suffering and anguish,
such a thing is not an act of foolishness
when undertaken voluntarily,
it is an act of supreme courage.

We are not meant to be happy in this life,
we are built for struggle,
to strive and to break through the top soil
and reach the light of day.

We must bear our cross,
however heavy,
however unfair,
and continue on.