In the throes of some created despair, I watch her struggle. She is oblivious to the world around her, absorbed in the essence of suffering and living the lie so completely that all joy has escaped her face.

That beautiful face. I can image her smiling, and I can imagine my own smile in return. I can see her eyes light up with passion, and feel my own response as her full lips turn upward in the moment. I can almost hear her laugh like a song sung in forever’s chorus…

“Please, beautiful lady, smile. Find it, please, let it out. It’s all going to be fine, I promise.”

“You have no idea what I am going through,” I hear her respond.

“I know. I can’t imagine what it is that would keep that smile from rising. I can’t fathom the pressure that turns diamond into coal, that creates powder out of the strongest rock.”

“Don’t start with me,” I hear her say. “You can’t understand, you don’t know me.”

“I do know you,” I reply. “I’ve seen you dancing in vast fields of joy, playing with the flowers that light up the soil like stars in the sky. I’ve heard you laughing at the nothingness you’ve sought, felt you surrender to the dew that wipes the day’s dust from your feet. I’ve seen you tend to your wounds, and I’ve felt you make your way toward the Sun as it makes its way across your longing sky.

I’ve seen your prayers turn your knees red with angry retaliation. I’ve heard your sobs in the darkness of night, and I’ve felt your body heaving under the strain of really nothing at all. I’ve felt your tears run down my back in our embrace, and I’ve felt you leave a million times before this moment.”

“But…but I’ve never met you…”

“I’ve met you a thousand times in your dreams. I’ve seen you grasp at the enormity of what you see as failure, and I’ve seen you run toward the storm rather than face the uncertainty of sweet aloneness. I’ve watched you shackle your ankles to certain doom, and I’ve watched you clip your wings instead of using them to fly. Freedom scares you, and owning yourself in ways beyond the teachings of your masters makes you insane with fear. You fear losing the knife more than you fear the pain of cutting yourself.”

“How? You don’t know…,” her voice trailing off into some thought she would not share.

“You are me, sweet lady. I am you. Our fingers play the same strings, our voices lift up the same notes. I don’t know you as much as I know me.”

Then a kiss. A sweet, gentle kiss. Strong arms hold the fragile, powerful legs support the crumbling. Love is found in not knowing who has the strength, or who is the one falling to pieces. They are interchangeable and neither knows itself outside the fact that both stay standing, or both stumble, almost at the same time.

“Goodbye, beautiful lady. Hold me dear until we meet again, in some other form, in some other way. Please, I beg of you, smile. Just find something in your soul that sets your face ablaze. Go there, and fly.”

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.

From the mountain highs I’ve heard you sing. I have heard you from afar, and am ready in your arrival.

There were moments when the pieces seemed to fall away. I now know they were simply falling into place. Powerful is perspective, how when the glass breaks we suffer until the day we realize the stained-glass piece of art those pieces have become. Sad how we forget the tears when the smiles come, and forget the smiles when the tears come. Enlightening it is when we see how wonderful the journey has been, and how we could have never arrived at the destination without the pitfalls, without the stumbles, and without the will to continue to put one foot in front of the other.

It was in the moments when I wished for an end to it all that I realized the very beginning. It was in the bleakest darkness that I felt the enormity of a single star. It was at the very edge of the pit where I realized the end of the climb, and the beginnings of a journey into the world around me.

How glorious is that pit, that darkness, that end!! I could never have moved on had my feet not been willing to end each step and start anew. A new wave could not have crested on my beloved shore had another not receded. The tide could not have risen with its falling, and the Sun could not rise without the darkness that announces its arrival.

And now the Sun begins to rise. Rise in the realization that I know you. I’ve always known you.

‘Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.‘ ~Rumi

Imagine I’ve carried you my entire journey, never realizing that each end removed a layer to you, the core. Imagine that each end permitted another step in a journey that led to you. You are not the destination, but the trailhead I’ve been looking for. You are not the end, you are the wonderful beginning.

Now, I sit in a space uniquely mine and I see. I see the mountains rising high above the happy trees surrounded by the bluest sky I’ve ever seen. I feel the warm, dry air caressing my skin as the Sun warms me to my core. I hear the beautiful trail that calls my name, and the single note that draws my attention to the song you are singing. I know had I met my end back there, I would never have found this here, and my life would not have been fulfilled but rather become an experience left incomplete by my own insanity.

Yes, I hear you. Yes, I have arrived. Yes, you may now show yourself and kiss me in the sunlight. Yes, you may hold my hand and hug me under the fullest moon. Yes, you may make love to me in the plush grass where we sit. There is nothing not allowed here, for there is nothing we need disagree on.

The wind does not tell our wings “you are wrong.” The sky does not tell us in our flight, “you must go.” The Earth does not demand “leave me alone” upon our landing. We are meaningful in our togetherness, lustful in our want, and powerful in our individuality.

It seems we have  been building a nest, and we’ve met in the construction holding the same twig. It seems we have meant to be here, now, having been bumped and bruise but truly no worse for wear. It seems it all makes sense now as we view the stained glass art that our broken moments have created.

“No, don’t put me back together again!” screamed Humpty Dumpty. “I love myself as I am, broken as I may appear to you!” What worth would the King’s horsemen have when the soul of the supposed broken realize their own beauty in their pieces? We’d all realize that there is nothing left to fix, and the fixers would fade away. We’d all realize the pieces aren’t ugly remnants, but beautiful works of art.

There, I rise my soul to meet you before I kiss your tender lips. I love my pieces, and I love yours, too. Imagine what we can create when we mix them all like the ingredients to some great feast. Imagine what we can do in the realization that the parts of who you are fit quite nicely with my own, and no glue is necessary in their union. Sweet justice to the past, sweet love to the tears we once cried, and sweet reverence to the empty space we’ve held reserved for each other when sleep finally comes.

I smile at the idea, and marvel at the consequence. I will leave it there, for now, for the first step has been taken, the first ripples have been cast. The hike has just begun.

Love…