I don’t know if you know that it is me who I find when I look deeply into you.

Not the me I am familiar with, a new me, the me that I want and long to be. And that me resides in your love for me.

You offer a place where I find myself lovable—where my quirks and insecurities are smothered by your affection; where I can stand in the light of your love feeling myself whole and complete, basking in the forgiveness and gratitude you offer me.

I suspect, and hope, that I offer the same to you. In fact, when I look at you, I know I do. I’m so proud of you, you don’t need to impress me or be a particular way. I notice the tiny scar above your right eyebrow, the one you got falling off the swing when you were four, and I remember that we had lives before we met. I am sorry that I haven’t always known you, but I quickly remember that I always will and then I’m filled with gratitude for the softness and presence of your skin right now.

We weren’t born at the same moment, not even close, we each have our separate histories but on one evening our two rivers met and we have flowed together since. The waters of us have mingled; we are still different but together too. My sun rises in your eyes, my birds fly in your skies.

The more I am with you the more I notice about each of us. Sometimes at night I am half way between waking and sleeping and I think of some part of you: last night it was the little toe on your right foot. I couldn’t stop thinking/dreaming of the little piggy who cried wee, wee, wee, all the way home. And in that moment I realized that I want everything for you—but still don’t think I deserve everything myself.

You remind me that I’m better than I know, that if I were to reach for the stars you wouldn’t be surprised. That if I were to hand you the North Star wrapped in a white, silk drawstring bag you would touch my arm the way you do, reach your delicate fingers behind my neck and pull me close, touching your lips and then tongue to my always waiting lips. We would throw that star back up into the sky so that other lovers, sailors and adventurers could navigate by its light.

It hurts and heals to love you this much, to find myself in you. There I am braver than I thought I could ever be. Lesser love loses itself in another. We do too, but then we find ourselves again, synchronize our hearts in the pleasures and pains that this world, this universe offers. Our love is celestial and of the Earth too. It holds everything together and makes life here mysterious and full of wonder. We are a poem, alternating words, writing together in everything we think, feel and do.

I love you, and in that, I love me too. Love is never still; it, like light, and sharks, is always moving, aware, hungry, inviting lightness and revealing everything. We stand in each other’s light as we couldn’t stand alone. We offer each other reason to always open, to always feel warm and to be the tinder for each others fire.

It’s funny really to love this much—an extravagance that isn’t earned yet received freely confirming the existence and importance of something greater than ourselves that has somehow brought and then held us together. We dissolve, lying naked under a big fluffy duvet, melting into each other, like knights and ladies fortifying ourselves to face another mundane day. Like everyone here we go about our days, but while our duties sometimes lead us in different directions, our love welds us into one being in two places.

Sometimes, when the going gets tough you are challenged while I am not, or the other way around, and that is when our love is strongest, when we grow separately and it doesn’t appear to bring us together. But it always does, and it is the trust in you and the trust in me that makes those times, and each of us, all that we can be.

This love lifts us to a world where all is as it should be, all is as it is. You make me want to be me, to be here: the greatest gift of all. For I am me, so I might as well be. And I am we.

We, we, we, all the way home…

 

~

Author: Jerry Stocking

Image: Pixabay

Editor: Travis May