Tonight, not unlike every other night before and most certainly after, I mumbled yes, took your outstretched hand and permitted myself to chase you, underneath the shifting skies and the arrival of rain-season.
I guess I've gotten used to treading those arid streets of mine that run themselves straight, true and uncontroversial. Each step, each day, earning by modest labor, the dream that beckons us, one and all.
Then you changed that, the scorching pettiness of everyday. You took my hand, pulled me out and lead me through the puddled alleys and corridors of your life. You showed me a splashing good time, and I wondered when it'll end, like most good things do.
So I skipped along and lived and laughed as much as I still could, drinking the unbridled mirth and enjoying each drop of joy like it'll be the last.
But afterward, once all the pattering chatter, the gushing exuberance of each meeting had faded like the storm's morning after, it was still you at the end of the day. Still your hands in mine. It didn't seem like you'll be letting go.
And by some unexpected magic, by some happy twist of fate, like unexpected rainfall and the comforting murmur of water through eaves, I kept in-step through the shimmering avenues of you.
The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain, so they say. So I'll acquiesce and later be better for it.
I love you as if I'm praying. I wrap all my feelings, all my hopes, all my dreams, in a little package, send it adrift and wish to the stars that it finds its little way. I hope against hope that this is it, the tale the stories of old speak of in their coloured tone and feisty paces. I, like so many others before me, whisper to the wind this yearning.
But I don't know what to whisper, what to desire and what to despair. I've never known love besides the frivolous kind that runs the uninitiated heart over and over. What can you call this love that slowly sets its roots over the barren soil of my life and then begins to grow, ever so carefully, to finally open its blossoms for me, of all people, me.
I admit I truly am naive, to compare what I have now to what I've imagined then. I thought that love is a jittery-feeling a few moments before triumphant jump or perilous fall. I've come to think of love as something to turn the gut and silence the tongue. And yet, what I've found in you is something else entirely. The fire, the burning desire I've romanticized for many a night is, instead, this steadfast flame that warms me with its somber tenacity and comforting glow.
You comfort me. Your sincerest smile, your lightest laugh: I see in them who you are and what you intended, and there I see this overwhelming kindness and an unconscious gentleness a guy like myself could only hope to find.
Stay by my side and I could take the world. Wrap your arms around me, and I'll let it all go--your hands are worth so much more.
So I'll continue praying, and I'll probably never stop.
