Your beard brushes against my face. My smile leaks out onto your skin. Your embrace is my medicine.

The tender rubies of our hearts—the naked embers deep inside us—glow and glow; they grow and grow, becoming something so ripe and beyond breathtaking that words feel too clumsy to describe it. Sentences slung together seem so terribly ordinary, entirely too loud, like rattling chainsaws, to describe the otherworldly breeze-like, lacy gentleness of what we share, my love…

Our eyes lock, for the thousandth time.

You pull me close—and my body draws to yours like the hungriest magnet in the world.

We dance to silence, to the hushed, but potent songs of our own lively heartbeats.

You touch me like there is no point in ever touching anyone else again.

I kiss you like my lips have only ever known how to kiss yours.

We hold each other like we were constructed out of swirled marble to hold only one another. All of our bits and pieces line up and fit together, not well, not decently, not just barely good enough—but perfectly. It feels just right.

Your beard brushes against my face. My smile leaks out onto your skin.

Your embrace is my medicine.

After all the desperate searching we do in life, all the endless empty consuming and needing things and all the power we think we want—isn’t this what we’re really after?

This.

This warm, tingly feeling in our bones as we hug. This ripe, passionate kiss. This explosive laugh. This tender sharing of our secrets, spilling out of our mouths like scrolls of red wine. This mutual understanding as our limbs are tangled together, souls intertwined. This deep, unlimited well of inspiration, encouragement and support. This safe space to share our gossamer dreams and be exactly ourselves. And be as fragile and human and vulnerable as we really are.

Isn’t this what we’re really after?

Connection. The simple power of connection. And the utterly joyous taste of what it means to create a life, together, to artfully weave two lives into one, to have our hearts wide f*cking open to someone and share exactly all of ourselves. Every last ounce.

Because maybe we used to need to want all the success in the world, maybe we used to think we needed fame and numbness and big screen TVs and the hollow, ostentatious ping of the American dream, but now—maybe now, maybe right now—we know better.

Maybe we feel the whisper of something deeper, maybe we hear the jeweled bird calls of something more substantial that our hearts and souls require…

What are we living for—what brings true meaning?

Love.

Because underneath our pretty, painted veneers, underneath our snarky can-do attitudes, we all need love and connection to grow, flourish and blossom. Each one of us. Especially the ones, like myself, who are too damn stubborn to admit it.

Because underneath my tears and anger and prickly bitterness and the prideful songs of my independence and the endless quests for freedom and all the walls I cleverly concealed and called boundaries—I wanted love.

I wanted dripping hearts. I wanted to taste the depths, the peaks, the canyons, the valleys of connection. I needed it. I needed to know the rawest sides of intimacy. I needed a love so deep it would shake me utterly loose, thread by thread, as I shed my old dead leaves to become the supple, vibrant woman I really am. I needed love to grow, flourish and blossom—and I’m no longer ashamed to admit it.

Darling, all I ever needed was to feel the warmth of your fingers resting in the palm of my hand. All I ever needed was to be heard and understood as I lie, so cozy, in the comfortable spot I’ve carefully carved out on your chest. All you ever needed was to be heard and understood as you feel my gentlest passion-fruit flavored kisses on the peeling spots of sunburnt skin on the tops of your shoulders.

What are we living for—what brings true meaning?

Love.

Love heals. It uplifts and inspires. It reveals everything. Love rips us wide open and makes us soar.

For far too long, I tried to forsake my sensitive heart and be reasonable and intellectual. I tried so hard to be sensible.

I say f*ck that to the moon and back.

I am not made to be sensible. I am made to love.

Because the stirrings of our thirsty, juicy human hearts cannot be silenced with the metallic plucks of formulas and hum-drum robotic how-to’s and mathematical calculations and sequin-laced loneliness and empty relationships that, on the surface, make so much sense. Life is full of so many luscious things that make no sense at all. Love—for instance—mostly makes no sense, and isn’t that perfectly wonderful?

Because deep inside us, in the quivering hollow places of our bones we keep secret from the world—we thirst most of all for the stardust things that don’t make any damn sense.

So darling, I’ll be really honest. I am naked, split-open and trembling, in the calloused hibiscus petals of your hands. It makes no sense to my brain, but my heart gets it. I’m finally strong enough to admit that I need love—I crave it—I need it to survive. We all do. And that’s not weakness, it’s not neediness—it’s natural. It’s strength. It’s truth.

And in moments like this, when I’m so vulnerable that I feel as transparent as a windowpane, it seems painfully clear that we are all just walking tenderly around this earth—stumbling, learning, smiling, crying and falling down sometimes—but constantly starving for love.

Underneath it all, underneath our pretty masks and peacock displays of calculated mastery, we starve…

We starve for the raw sweetness of real connection and intimacy. We long to drape our hungry hands in the warm palm of another.

Let us starve no more, my darling. Let us hinge open our hearts as wide as we possibly can and feed each other with this love, spoonful by heaping nectar spoonful.

Maybe it will feel scary, maybe it will feel far too vulnerable—so what? Let us face the shakiness of that fear, too. Let us lap at the frothy ocean edges of love together, of life together, whatever it may bring.

Your beard brushes against my face. My smile leaks out onto your skin.

Life is not perfect—far from it—but I have all I ever wanted.

I have all I ever needed, as I sink deeper into the golden warmth of your embrace.

I know what it is to love.

.

Author: Sarah Harvey

Image: Flickr/Philip Edmondson

Editors: Yoli Ramazzina; Emily Bartran