I wrote you a letter with the first breath I took
I’ve written you every moment since
Your name has steadfast sat on the tip of my tongue
But darling, while for so long words escaped
Your half-moon heart I know so well
For my star shines from the other side
Celestial marvels apart
But oh sweet love,
Together we are full
I took my patiently longing letters and sent them
Beseeching each stranger, stop light and song to be my postmen
I prayed that the conversations between our searching souls could rise to paint the sky–so that the stars might mirror your freckles, the moonlight the glow in my eyes
Our perfect haze of what will be
Heaven drew maps on our palms
So that each time we sat with our head in our hands
We could trace the paths worn into our calloused skin
To see how much closer we’d come
To sharing no more paper words
Besides the Times between us
On sleepy Sundays
I didn’t know my map was torn in two
That when the path seemed most to come to a solemn stop
You would reach out to shake my atlas palms, my compass heart
Repeat words I’d say for decades to come after long days
Hello, my love. It’s so good to be home.
We have our own language, you and I
When the two of us talk with our hands
I read the braille of your goose bumps
My fingertips sing to your sideways smile
As my skin memorizes moments
That age will one day forget into silken shadow
Take my hand and we’ll walk
Tell me your mother’s favorite flower and your father’s favorite book
I’d like to know how many widths of my pinky finger
Fit in the spaces of your spine
The capacity of your lungs when full
And the moments that make you breathe that deeply
Grand views or the Old Italian woman’s laughter making the inbound bus fly
Is there a way to quantify exactly how much envy the Milky Way pours into your irises?
You wear fear patched on your sleeve and you’ve stitched it so tight
It will require a lot of adventures, storms, stories, sun and stumbles for it to fray
But that cocktail is by large my favorite sandpaper
I will wear a ferocious brand of domesticity
I will care so hard it blisters my soul; knowing full well callouses make it hard to call me “pretty”
The first time I saw you
I swear in the indelible elegance of our irises igniting
I didn’t fall in love–love fell through me
I want to wear that love on so much more than my ring finger
Tattoo your sunsets on my rib cage
So that I can jump-start dawn with each beat of my heart
I want to wear your love on my pinkies
So you can laugh at feigned propriety when I sip wine at the bistro downtown
Don’t be my umbrella
Be the forgetfulness and the whisper in my ear when it rains
Teaching trust that the sun will come
Be the sun when it comes
I want to wear your love in my laughter.
When I taste those iridescent words,
I mean that I want to promise you poetry and tree bark and starry skies and nights asleep in our little home
When I say I love you, I mean that I promise…
I promise to spend every moment of the rest of my life loving you
And when those moments float away like firefly embers into the night
I promise to take your hand and step into entropy
To choose one of those evanescent pinpricks and learn to exist as light
I promise to never give up
To never grow complacent
To spend every day learning how to love you even better
Because of that
I promise to love you courageously
I want to love you in a world of little things
Bottles of wine on Tuesdays
Breakfast in bed
Mountain drives
And kisses you never saw coming
I promise to always be kind to you
I will not call you anything that is not love
I will not let anger run in my veins
I will be honest
I will be soft
I promise to set butterflies free in my chest each time you walk through the door after work
To hold your hand when you’re scared and your heart when it’s heavy
Let these words be a promise—not because there will be moments where we can’t remember
But because I want you to be able to hold in your hands the overflow of joy we pour into one another’s worlds.