All my life
(These past 2 decades of fast paced growth)
I searched for this one love,
The one the books were written about,
The songs, the movies, the poems.
And I thought how I would know.
Sometimes, I do know.
I know, for example,
When your voice is groggy
And I can hear the words stick to each other sleepily,
When I call you at half past noon on a Sunday,
And I have woken you;
I know then that I love you.
Or,
When we speak for a few hours before bed,
And I hear the swish of a toothbrush so casually over the receiver,
And I imagine you, your left hand on the edge of the sink, leaning,
And the phone between your right shoulder and ear
As you brush and listen, making faces at the mirror.
That's how I know that I love you:
That it's the little, tiny moments that you give me carelessly,
That it's the seconds that you are unguarded,
That I hold precious.
That is your essence.
I steal a few glances now and then,
As you hold me and watch that kids' movie,
And I know then,
When I find the silhouette of your lips
Outlined against the movie screen
To be beautiful,
That I love in a way I hadn't before.
I know that only I love you.
I know that it is make believe for you,
I know because you do not live for my stolen moments,
(You do not, for example, know that when I am angry,
My lips shrink into a stern little pout;
Nor that when I am happy
I bounce on the ***** of my feet,
Like a child).
You do not find endearing
The trembling of my voice,
Or the honesty of my necessity for you.
I know.
I know I found the reason for my words,
Sleepless nights,  tearful epiphanies and rash decisions;
I found why those songs and those books and those movies
Do not play out in real life,
But seem rather like other universes
of pretty people with too much free time.
I've discovered how I know I love you
With the passion of 2 decades of search:
Because I have learned to love the small,
Human,  imperfect things about you,
Like the way you yawn into the phone,
Or forget names.
That's the epistemology of this feeling
That otherwise I can't explain.