Hello, Love

Us.

Suddenly I find myself consumed by the kind of happiness that speaks a thousand languages my lips do not know where to start. The alphabet is not enough, nor will the numbers ever be. And so I smile instead because I am beholden to this heart equally beholden to the girl, and because an unspeakable joy such as this, a gladness so convincing such as this, can only be felt in the silence of words, rightly so in the muteness of language, even as they graze my mind so that I may finally write them down, revealed in their naked truth. They trickle into my dreams like a river sourcing itself from a place so high it never ends, finding sanctuary in the open waters of the ocean, and as the wakeful world blurs in the distant shoreline, I float, the weight of my worries sinking beneath the waves, dropping like stones helpless against the surge and undertow.

For the first time after a long, long time, I can greet the sun again like an old friend, rising and rushing to wash my body with its light and sweep away the darkness around it. My mornings are no longer the same, tragic as they were before, the nights more so. Where I stand, my world is now a different place, and I look upon it with the assurance, reverence even, that things are starting to fit their proper spot in the universe. I know now where my heart belongs, and I intend it to stay where it is now.

I wish I can promise her forever, but that is impossible. I can only promise her now and the immediate future, and who I am and who I will be in the course of that time. Perhaps that is enough, because this lifetime happens only once. And I am quite certain that she, too, happens only once in the same lifetime, and I do not want it any other way, certainly not twice and yet a different girl the second time. I do not deign an apology, but if the universe will not allow it, may fate be kinder, gentler at the least, because the first day she becomes a part of my life — as she now does — may just as well be the only day that I am willing to live for the rest of the years ahead. Three hundred and sixty five days and more, of her at the start of it all.

I know now that happiness is the province of love, and it dwells in it under the aegis of a desire so strong it commands my life with a sense of purpose. These I have come to realize with the touch of her hand, my fingers trembling ever so lightly even before contact, and as my palms lock themselves with hers I cannot help but wonder how surreal it is, how beautiful the touch of her hands can be even as it mystifies my being, because if that alone is not magic I do not know what else is. These I have come to realize, too, with her smile that seems perpetual on her lips, climbing up to her eyes as though she sees the world from the vantage point of joy, the rest of the world around her drawn to the bliss that her vision casts upon the humble earth, my self most of all, which is enough proof that to be with her is to be satiated with the taste of contentment in life, the kind that never seems to run dry. And through it all, in the things I do and wish to carry out, she is the purpose I live by, for she stirs my life, awakens it every day from the slumber that it used to tolerate. I have never felt so alive than this.

Hello, Love. I am yours twice. Today for tomorrow. Tomorrow for today.