Forever Yours

Dear Poetry,

I had no idea how difficult this would be. I have started this letter to you fourteen times and have discarded all of those attempts. I am writing to you to try to tell you how I feel about you. This is a love letter, plain and simple.

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I have read and been advised that love, real love, is a choice. As a grown man, father and husband, I understand that. When my boys were born, my capacity to love grew Grinch-like, each time. I had no idea I could love so fiercely. My love for my wife has grown into a steadfast communion of trust and communication, something I avoided most of my life. She is my confidante and best friend, my partner. I love her with all my heart, but she is not my only lover, because there is you. You are something entirely different.

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You are my mystery. You are never the same. You hide invisible in plain sight, inside a moment within the divine creation of now.

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And I don’t always find you when I look for you. I don’t always touch you when I reach for you. But when I do find you and touch you, every time, every single time, is like the first time. You touch my heart and soul like a first kiss. Every time! How can that be? It’s electric and sweet and squeezes my heart so hard, with a caress so pure that I brim to overflowing. I flutter like a schoolboy and soar all at once. Nothing and no one else can do this; there is only ever a first time once, but not with you. Just thinking you and I long for you. I feel the anticipation of you as we lean into each other, knowing it will ever be the first time we kissed.

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I always hear you when you speak. When you grace another with a brush of your lips, I feel it as well. It was what made me search for you. I read and reread, think and rethink your affairs with these oh-so-many others and I cannot help but tingle and sigh. I lose myself even in your embrace of another. I do not get jealous. I accept that you are beyond my ownership or any other’s. I am only ever blessed to be in your company.

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Even so, I pray that I might again be first upon the wonderful discovery of your creation and taste for myself the sweet agony of your lips.

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Forever yours,

a writer