I Always Knew You’d Come

I knew you’d come.

I once heard you whisper through the trees as I bathed in the soothing mountain air. I heard you say the most wonderful things in a sunlight caress, and I felt you love me in the way you pulled the sweat from my skin, in the way you accepted my reply through the soft moan that involuntarily escaped my lips.

I know you are there. I can feel you in the ground beneath my feet, and in the desire I have to never quit the climb. I feel your hand gently on my back as I move upward and onward, your soft words reminding me of who I am when the world would like me to forget. I feel the unbridled passion between us, and know that someday, somehow, the river of life will take us to that special place where we can finally rest. Together.

Others wonder who you are, but I can see you in the sunlit reflection cast upon the still waters on which I gaze. I can see you in my own eyes burning with a passion brighter than a million suns. One can see you in the fierceness on which I walk this place, intently resolved to hold my space while the winds take me to another.

To know you they need only know me. Not the flesh that makes a man mortal in ambivalence, or the thoughts that take such a mortal to pretentious heights of mindlessness. No, to have met you they need to meet the Soul lying beneath those things. The Soul pulsing like an ocean, mighty because it lies beneath all waters. A Soul holding Itself like molten rock beneath a mountain, sure to explode when It must in a glorious thunder that quietly sings the song of immortality.

To know you they need know nothing more than Love. Sweet, unbridled, godly Love. All they need do is feel a baby’s hand tightly squeeze their outstretched finger. All they need pray are words of selfish adoration that lifts up another’s heart. All they need do is lie still, and listen, until the words they hear all make perfect sense.

Yes, I knew you’d come.

Even as a boy crying loudly in the darkness, I knew you’d come. Even as a young man struggling against himself, I knew you’d come. When the torrents came and I longed for dry land, I’d knew you’d come. When the failures fell all around me and I begged for it all to end, I knew you’d come. You are the reason I never left this place, and the reason why my heart still beats strongly within my chest.

It all makes so much sense to me now. I lived this life to find you, and found you so that I may live this life. Beyond the stories of average men lays a truth only lover’s know; that through the stumbles and falls of a life well lived they always knew you’d come.

Always. Even on the dark canvas of despair they’d paint a tiny ray of light. Even in the blackness of their thoughts there’d always be a beautiful stain of white. Even on the sheerest rock face they’d find the smallest handhold on which to climb. Lover’s just can’t quit, for in their lonely space and darkest hour they simply know.

One day when our flesh finally gets to feel what our souls have always known, it will all make perfect sense. Until then, this artist will make his rounds painting murals along the way, staining empty walls with scenes of the most beautiful mayhem. Finally we’ll meet in Rumi’s field, sensing the unimaginable, and you’ll sign your name beneath my own in this life’s great masterpiece.

Then, you’ll lean in on my longing ear and whisper the words I’ve always heard you sing…

I always knew you’d come.