Desert Bloom

Dearest Love,

How could anyone not love you?

From the moment I met your eyes

I was welcomed home before we even said our first hello.

And when we finally spoke

it was songbirds not butterflies that rattled in my ribcage,

attempting to sing my heart away.

Did you notice?

That on that walk underneath a blanket of stars

we talked for hours and hours about

anything and everything

and every single word carried my tentative heart,

reaching out in impossible recognition.

*

Looking back at that moment how could I have not known

that my love for you was as certain as the way

the tide always returns to kiss the shore,

as joyful as the way the echo playfully calls back to voice,

And as natural as the way we breathe life

into trees and they breathe life right back into us?

How could I have not known that your love

would be like a gentle rain showing resilient desert

something it forgot it could be until it erupted

in a kaleidoscope of colors,

blooming with new beginnings?

*

And the perfect imperfection of stumbling through

These beginnings with you,

both of us love blind trying to read our hearts writing in braille.

This perfect imperfection of

re-learning ourselves and the other,

re-learning to grow and help grow,

to love and be loved

has shown me that home is wherever you are

and I’ll love the home and its crows

because before I was born I loved you,

and when I was older I loved you,

just as I love you now because love,

like time,

is never linear.

*

And as the seasons come to life one after another,

I'll walk with you hand in hand into the horizon we've created.

And even after all that’s left of us are memories and

The mountains crumble to dust and river beds crack dry,

You’ll still have my love.

Even when the sea swallows cities whole and

pining winter finally catches the hand of spring,

Your love I’ll be.

And when at last the Milky Way and Earth mingle,

The sun blowing out our planet like a candle,

In that vastness of space,

Where all forgotten dreams go to rest.

Even if heaven doesn’t exist

And time has become less than a wisp of a memory,

And nothing else of me remains,

Even then it will live on

Like the last leaf clinging to a tree

At the changing of seasons,

this unending feeling, a love without end.