To Whom Do I Owe My Love?

To whom do I owe, my love?

I want to know. I need to know. When I sit silently in my loneliness, playing with my fears, lost in the shadows that move within my mind, I ask. When I lay alone reaching for that empty space where you should be, playing with the wrinkled sheets, the sigh I offer begs an answer.

To whom do I owe my truth?

I love you so. I love the way I feel when I think about you. I love the vision of the way you stand. I love your voice as it echoes in my mind. I love the beauty of your smile, and the way everything about me flutters in the memory of you. Yet I lay here, alone, unsure of which hour the clock has struck, missing the very light that greets my morning eyes.

I stretch my body, stiffened by the demanding night, and let out a moan of continuing renewal. Naked as I lay, enshrouded by comfortable discomfort, I ask for the warmth of your body. A shiver is the only reply.

They say that people our age have found their independence, and made an irreconcilable agreement to give our time to very few, and devote our lives to even fewer of those who would seek more of our attention.

That thought saddens me, as such a demand should be sweet to parched lips. Perhaps, to many, the fruit of love has become sour to the taste, the price of companionship too great a price to pay. Perhaps we’ve found liberation in our moments alone, a certain freedom in the empty spaces that another once filled.

Maybe I am slow to the realization, or maybe I don’t share in the agreement. Maybe time will tell to which I owe these lonely moments, but the darkness demands I ask.

To whom do I owe my time?

“No one,” of course, is my answer, yet in my humanness I wish it different. I want to owe my time to you, discover a commitment made to not only cherish our moments together but make them abundant. I’ve found a path to share that we can walk, a rising sun we can watch together, an altar on which we can make love for hours.

I want to bask in the inconvenience of such an agreement. I want to sigh in pure delight walking when I wish to sit, in leaving when I want to stay, in staying silent when I wish to speak. I want to give something up for you, not in demand of sacrifice, but in the wonderful gift of seeing what was empty full, in what was dark well-lit, in what was cold now heated by our rhythm.   I want to be soaked in love with you, fatigued in our sweet passion, and I want to lie next to a woman I know better than anyone else in the world.

Perhaps this desire is the follow of a simple, yet complicated, man. Maybe this end is not destined for me, perhaps my time alone dreaming of you is as close as I am meant to get. I just know that I am bored beyond belief in the life of a single man. I find no joy in the simple compliments of women, in the lurid sex that our bodies demand. I find no satisfaction in the lack of real connection, absent of the possibility of forever in a touch. I find no real words in the shallow books I now read, and I find no real truth in any oath I hear.

While I find joy everywhere, I find in the emptiness a promise of its own. I hear the sweet song of love in every stitch of sound, and see the light of this truth in every moment I am awake. I have loved, and lost, and been lost in love. I have been fulfilled in hollow dreams, and trusted in empty promises. I’ve uttered words I had no hope of understanding, and sought solace in the ways my mind thought would save me. In the end I crashed and burned, reborn in the hopeful ways that have awakened me.

The awakened me feels everything I trust and trusts everything I feel. There are no middle grounds here, just the truth of intuition and of instinct with a voice all of their own. I know that voice, it doesn’t speak like all the others. I hear that voice, it doesn’t sound like all the others. It exists within me, and the more I dive into that place the more I know how much I feel…EVERYTHING.

It leads me to places where I bend to smell a flower bloomed, and lay in the grass to bathe in the morning dew. I love the flower and the grass, the birds above and the leaves that crinkle under my bare feet. I love the clouds, and the earth, everything between and everything beyond. I know it, because I can feel it, and I’ve learned to listen to what I feel.

Alas, a question rises.

To whom do I owe this love?

I feel it’s you, and watch you from this distance. I’m alone and naked in the rain as I watch you twirling in a mist of your own.  I’ll watch from here, my toes flexing in the mud, my heart beating quickly in the storm. You are beautiful in every way, so I’ll hold this space as necessary for my own survival, as necessary for the process of living to unfold.

For I owe you nothing, and yet I owe you everything. I owe you for waking up the dreamer, for holding steady the power of intention. I see no path to you from here, yet I know our winding ways will intersect somewhere. All I can do is walk, forward, keeping the vision of you in my mind as I focus, intently, on the twisting path ahead.

That vision of you…the one that strengthened me before it had taken form…sustains me now. I know there will be those moments when I reach through empty air, when I open my eyes and find nothing but empty space. I know I will lose myself in the misery of wanting you now. Yet, I also know that I will survive, as I have done each and every time I’ve thought of you, until you are finally, clearly, here.

I will be, too.