Sometimes I love you so much I can't breathe.
You're always there now, on the edges of my mind.
You're like a light that falls on every thought I ever have-
You don't ever obscure anything, you just make it all clearer,
Brighter,
Better.
When I feel sad, the thought of you flits across my mind like sunlight on the water
And I feel warmer.
When I am about to fall asleep your fingers drum my heartbeat
And I am at peace.
And I,
Lying in your arms
Skin to skin
Soul to soul
Lying in silence for the first time in five years
My demons not just silent but shrinking,
I can't help it-
I know I could spend my life like this.
I know I could be content to come home to you,
Not even that,
Not just,
But for you to be
What home means.
In those dangerous, quiet hours of the morning
When your breath tickling my neck makes my heart ache with joy that you ever took a breath
And the smell of your hair lulls me into dreams of your smile
I dream in waking as well;
I admit to myself
Just how serious I am when I murmur that I love you
Just how deeply I've fallen already.
In those moments
I know that you are already
Home to me
And I can brush the thought aside when I am too scared to let it live but
The proof is in the way I ache to leave you when the morning comes.
I hurt inside when we kiss goodbye at your door,
You bleary eyed and wrapped in a blanket,
Me being tugged away by a world I am increasingly, blatantly
Uninterested in
If you aren't there to light it up.
My life nags at me like a whiny child
And I push its greedy fingers away.
What is life when there is love?
What is the work you do to pay your bills when there is the work you can do to feed your soul?
There are wounds healing in me that I didn't know I had,
Wounds that protest feebly when I turn away for the stairs.
What is a house I grew up in
When all it holds for me are memories of so many nights
Wishing for what I feel when I'm with you?
And yet I know we are young and afraid,
Caught in the tide of this enormous world
But the strength with which I feel that we can conquer it is staggering
If we can only reach one another, tethered by the wishes we've never dared to speak before,
Holding on with fingers that have slipped away from too many perfect days
And hearts that have bled for too many lonely nights
If we can only remember the breathless shock, that sudden certainty that the eyes we gaze into could be our port in every storm, our deepest comfort and our own sweet joy reflected,
If we can only decide
Unequivocally
That the chance to be happy like that is worth the risk of losing it
We will not lose,
We will not fail.
The light in our eyes that burns for each other cannot go out
If every time we close them we reach for it.
I can't know anything, can't be sure I really have seen the future that I dearly wish for
But I can promise that every star I see
Every night
Everywhere on earth
Will bear your name to me like a wish, like a prayer.
I can say with certainty that its lilting melody will escape my lips unbidden
Every time I round a corner and see something that reminds me of you
And leave a smile there.
I can swear to you with every piece of me that you
Are in my skin
That once I've said the words "I love you",
They can never be undone.
What I'm saying is that if someday you choose to fade away
If even in our passion and sweetness and devotion
Life sweeps us out of each other's arms for a time
I will love you until the day I die.
I looked at you the other night and knew it suddenly
The way I always know.
I knew that if I live to be 100, I will forget my own name but remember your face,
And it made me so wrenchingly happy
And so gently sad, somehow.
Because I can't know.
I can't know if I will always be worth the risk,
If all of our efforts will pay off.
A hundred thousand things could change us and our world...
But I do know
Me.
I know me and I know that the biggest, most permanent gesture of love I can give you
Is to let every second I spend with you change me like it does
To let every touch you give me leave fingerprints
Mould me into something new and better.
I will open my doors to you
Every one
I will let you run your fingers along the dusty, light starved parts of me
I will lead you through the rooms of my heart I've kept locked away
A shrine to brokenness
And I will see you throw the curtains open and let the sunlight make them glow anew.
And that way whether your stay be forever
Or tragically brief
Everyone who ever meets me
Everyone who loves me or my art
Everyone who passes me on the street and thinks my smile is lovely
Will meet you
Will admire you
Will
Love
You
As well.
That is my gift to you
The best and most complete I have to give.