Cool breezes are pressing their feathery cheeks against the sail of my heart, sending me floating towards a horizon that smells of dew infused with flowers. Sunlight, as though poured from a faucet, moistens my skin with its bronze tint. Seated with my legs propped up on a table, I am comfortable, serene, as placid as a body of water seen from afar. Yet there is chaos within me. I try to focus on my work and instead a flock of migratory birds streak across my mental sky, reminding me that life is transitory, fleeting. I attempt to read an article even as my eyes well with tears, affected by the pollen emanating from some distant, beautiful source. The seasons are changing; the world outside my window is in flux. My trembling hands reach for a branch of sky, a vase filled with morning, only to find that the sky has fallen and the vase has spilled.

How is it possible to feel so serene yet so chaotic? To be so keenly aware of the impermanence of all things and yet so content with everything, as though this moment could never change or disappear? The answer is that I am in love with you, deeply in love with you—the way that wet paint is darker and richer than when it dries, the love I feel for you saturates the pages of history and colors them with human possibility. And because I am in love with you I feel the unimaginable bliss of knowing that I am mortal, that my strength will one day fade—and I am liberated by that fact. Because I am in love with you my heart is like a lost kite, fluttering wildly…eyelids in deep sleep along the undulating landscape of the breeze. Because I am in love with you the limits of time, space, biology, religion and philosophy seem as fluid as two bodies pressed together in the morning mist.

When our bodies touch it is as though two sheets of silk—wrapped around our organs, our blood, our minds—were brushing past one another on the way to heaven. I see in your gaze the mischief, innocence and boldness of a mythological being. Your kisses lap against my lips like the ceaseless yearnings of the waves, eating away at the hull of my heart until I begin to sink, to fill with love and passion. And even as this transpires I make no effort to jump to safety—I have succumbed to you, given myself to the whims of your arms and the spirit that compels them to embrace me with the finesse of calligraphy.

We are dancing on a planet that is twirling like a dervish, arm in arm, hand in hand, staring up at a universe that envelops us in mystery. The dance, erratic as it may appear, is leading us closer to Truth. I feel an overpowering desire to contemplate the nature of the world and of existence with you. To tell you that we are free and explore that freedom with you. To show the world what kindness, passion and patience can accomplish, and accomplish that with you. To tame history, rewrite rules, explore the unexplored with you.

Darling, I am not an ordinary young man. I am a Poet. I belong to my art, which consists of love. And because I love you, we belong to one another. I feel things deeply. I am a meek rebel, a pacific warrior. What you are unleashing within me can only be expressed in geological terms, on par with volcanoes, hurricanes and other natural phenomena. For no matter how many words I unfurl upon this page, no matter how many metaphors escape the prison of my mind, the actual pounding of my heart is infinitely more powerful. So I ask you to come to me. Place your cheek against my chest. Kiss my neck, my arms, my back, my lips. Look at me with your pleading, beautiful eyes. Tap the energy within me—the beauty, the passion, the love. I cannot promise that it will be easy to feel as much as we are feeling, but I can promise that the source of our love will always be goodness, openness and passion.

Has time stopped, or has it simply ceased to matter? Has it ever? O, together we are the greatest conquerors, greater than the men and women of old that cut through deserts and forests, launched across oceans and space, for we are venturing into the farthest flung realms of existence. We are pursuing the Eternal, the One, the All-encompassing. And we are doing it together.

Summer 2010