The day after he asked a question I wasn’t expecting but knew the answer to immediately I wrote this. I hope the damn wedding happens someday, and these will change if it does. But they’re real good and I meant every word when I wrote em- so they should exist somewhere.
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Two years and three days before you put my favorite number of roses on the steps up to my apartment after twelve hours in petit four hell I wrote a thing about a man I had only known for 47 days.
“I think maybe the stars wrote you like a poem
Not the kind that rhymes and has some rigid scheme and is all flowery sentiments
The kind that keeps the reader alive
The kind that turns one way and then the next with those perfect imperfections that fold right around your soul
The kind that makes the reader wish to be covered in the words and completely consumed
I think maybe the stars wrote a messy, twisted, beautiful poem and have been waiting for 32 and a half years for the exact right moment to plop it in front of me
It’s the most thought provoking, hope inspiring, calm inducing, faith restoring, courage building, lovely poem I have ever laid my eyes on
This poem understands pain and deep joy like two sides of the same coin
This poem is comfortable with madness
This poem holds up a mirror and tells you the truth your eyes haven’t translated yet
This poem wraps you up like it doesn’t want to let you go and yet… it still does when the time comes, without any anxious fear that you won’t return
Of course you’ll return
That poem is THE POEM
Nobody finds THE POEM and just reads the next one like it’s nothing
That poem gets folded in your pocket and plastered on the walls of your heart and recited to anyone who will listen and some who would rather not
I think the stars wrote you like a poem and hand delivered you to me the last Monday of December all unassuming and nonchalant like it wasn’t the gift I’d been longing for my entire life.”
Two days after I wrote that you made this bracelet for me, and I made one that said “you are the poem”
You are still the poem. You are more of the poem every single day. I have watched you love me through the darkest, saddest, most hopeless moments of my life so far. In my puddles on the floor, in moments I felt invincible, in all of my mess. I have watched you delve deep into the who my babies are and what incredible things they are capable of. I have walked with you through multiple losses, those creatures we have long loved and those who never got to be. We have grieved both sets, and carry them with us. I have seen you daily choose to learn languages and cultures that are not your own for the sole purpose of being a good friend, being a resource, being better. I have napped through so many band practices and jam sessions that turn into moments I got to see you be a goddamn rockstar whether or not you see it. I watched you get up every day and go to bed early than we really want so you could achieve a level of security you never wanted for yourself, but chose to give to me. I watched my kids and my dogs and my self find out that you are in fact the person you claim to be, not a lie, not a pretender, not an opportunist.
And I stand in awe of all of it. All of you. This beautiful poem that I promise to keep reading, that I promise to always find a way to harmonize with, that I know will change. That I intend to know the last line of. You’re The Poem. You are my person. And I intend to be yours, forever and ever and always.
