We were so young back then....
And a part of me will be all the way back at that
night when a ring encircled your trembling finger,
the dark winter lake where you said yes and rushed
over me like those waters flowing beneath ice,
silently claimed in the clear winter moonlight
like a piercing arrow I've never recovered from,
the only wound I've ever wanted to keep open.
You were more familiar with numbers and stars
because math explained our tethers here
but heavenly bodies blaze to glow upon us
a celestial hint of what we could all be
even if we seem so small and helpless
against their unfathomable immensities.
I almost understand this mystery when
pulled inside you to see constellations
collapse as rivers of wild pulsing starlight
and rainbows exploding through eyes
I started to see everything in,
universes folding and unfolding
in the raw joy of what we'd come to hold.
We can only stay young for so long,
I could give you so many things in time,
roses with petals that no longer shiver
in nervous hands like on our first date,
I could give you cards or teddy bears,
chocolates that would melt and drip
from your mouth like a decadent rare liqueur
but wouldn't compare to the natural sweetness
forever blossoming from deep within you.
I could give you stones cut from the earth,
shaped to a brilliant iridescence that tell
of what spectrum may mark the soul
and they would be intimate keepsakes,
something like a beautiful secret clutched
between us that can only impart shards
of an entire story that is more than a vow to keep
these skins sacred and separate from all others.
So feel it when my arms lace around your waist,
a thrum rising from bone to marrow to soul,
the first time you ever made love,
the first time your heart completely broke
because our pain will always tell the truth
even if we may feel completely helpless
against its unfathomable immensity.