I look at clear, blue skies as she tries to dodge raindrops under the grayness where she is. I view cotton-ball clouds she will never see as she lays alone in her morning repose, meeting the demands of a rhythm that gets her through her day. I walk trails basking in the mountain sun as she overlooks trees not yet disturbed by urban progress. We are in different places while we miraculously share the same space; the space where we’ve always known each other.
While we are both learned souls who have shed many skins along the pathways of our lives, we are also humans who bear the weight of lives lived and lessons inflicted. We’ve left deadened layers of ourselves in the streams and oceans that have nearly drowned us but, as we have seen, caused us to rise to great occasions and meet our demons where they stand. It took us most of this lifetime to realize the promise we’d made in lives gone past, but we are here, finally, at the crossroad where hearts and fears wage war to no uncertain outcome. As we, two warriors destined to find this place along the journey of our lives, fight the battle we were always meant to fight I look at her with a fierceness in my eyes that beg her to listen to my truth in this moment. I know her fierceness and I find strength within it, and want to share a passion of my own with the only heart I want beating with me in the mud.
The greatest poem of my life began with just three words.
“I love you.”
They seem so simple, those three words. Yet within the smallness of their structure lays an infinity of possibility and an undeniable truth. Like a small seed set to one day become a giant redwood, those three words speak volumes as once-blank pages fill with odes, stories and the gospel of our poetry. Each embrace, each kiss, each moment we share our bared souls to one another fills a chapter in our book. Like branches birthed from great trees, we are living in a universe of our making. It is a universe begotten from the pureness of love in a way most would not comprehend yet all seem to dream exists.
“I love you,” an oath uttered not in the empty throes of passion or desperate need for a hand to hold but rather issued in the stillness of both mind and body. When the wicked winds would subside and the dust would settle those were words seen etched in the granite mountains where we sought our shelter. When we finally touched, when we finally kissed, and when I felt her smile vibrate in the very core of my existence, those were the only words our lips could let pass. Those words are the surrender of our flesh uniting to the involuntary utterances of souls surrendered to their divine undertaking, a remembrance of a promise made so very long ago.
Despite all of our souls’ memorial, we still have those human layers to contend with. Within this beautiful dialog exists a process where we learn the value of our challenge. Great views are achieved only after difficult climbs, and great victories are won after the hardest of battles. It is here that I whisper things she may not know, repeating mantras I am sure have been sung by her soul yet muffled by those human afflictions. It is here that we learn the importance of our presence, of our truth, and of the three words we’ve written in our gospels. It is here where the Demon Past thrusts a dagger at our exposed hearts and where the Angel Present parries with a truth of Her own. It is here where we learn the value of our hard-learned lessons, where honor rules the day, and love reigns over the screaming songs of fear.
For what she may not know in her humanness, she knows as truth in her soul. There are no others who can take her place. There are no moments where her voice is not the passion of my heart. There is not a single word spoken now that was not written in our annuls even before we first breathed in this life. Now is our time, and we are on our way.
For what I may not hear in my humanness I know as the song of my heart. I have learned a patience once foreign to my mind. I have sought connection when her flesh is absent and her words are sparse, and learned to find her in the silence of mind. I have discovered a trust not born in the certainty of human frailty, but in the strength of her character and the softness of her heart. I have put my faith in another for the very first time in my existence, and I know the outcome even before she calms herself enough to see it. I am no soothsayer but I can read, and I’ve read our story in the fields of marigolds and heard it in the music of wind flowing through a willow’s branches. While I know my next breath is not certain, when it comes I have found a certainty. With that breath will come a whisper that speaks her name, and a voice that calls out for her to kiss me.
Love, it seems, is more a certainty than life itself and much less finite. Warriors will unsheathe their swords and pick up their shields, but lovers will drop them both for one another. My breath may cease and my heart may stop but my love for her will pulsate until that moment when we meet again, remember, and pick up the story where we left off. Yet now I do not seek to wait until my next life, I seek to love her with the certainty and courage I was born to have and with a passion that was born the moment I first saw her smile.
What is left but to live out that promise? I need not make a new one, but I certainly must live the one made before time existed. That is what I must do, and in doing so my honor is reborn as my love continues on its eternal path.