When I tell you that ‘I love you’, I will be sharing with you, in words, a fragment of my soul.
I want you to know that these three words are not merely a plot born out of my desire to drown with those words, in a vivacious smile in your eyes… or to laze in your tender embrace; even though I am not completely without such selfish desires. The treasure I am seeking whispers to me from within the quickening rhythms of your heartstrings… revealed in the lightness in your step and the pitch of your voice. It is a reminder of the shrill and shiver I feel, when my lips touch yours or when I hear the sound of your laughter...or when I breathe in your long, soft, cascading waves.
It means I want to climb mountains and paddle down the rivers with you... and to sing guitar-songs and camp out under the stars. It means I want to write songs for you and compose the sweetest tunes and sing them to you... sing only for you – all the songs I could ever sing. It means I need to dance with you on luscious, blue, wet grass beside the setting sun, and hold your hand as we pray in the flickering candle light before we go to sleep at night.
I say those words because you are the creator of my dreams, not its creation. For love would not dock your heart to mine, or mine to yours, but rather set our hearts free… to love… to give with generosity and take without misgiving... a love that is neither a restraint nor a burden but one that will be our wings when we soar high and a pair of gills when we dive deep.
‘I love you’. I know not any other phrase that could describe how I would like to draw a portrait of you after the years have wrinkled our skin and turned our hair white. They are three over used words, ever struggling to preserve their meaning, yet they hold within them like no other words can; the hope that my passion and impatient desire for your love will be greater than my fear of the agony I would feel if you choose to withhold it from me. I feel their inadequacy because I will need more than words to steal your heart, everyday, for the rest of our lives.
Sometimes our quarrels may be fierce, but when I tell you that ‘I love you’ it means that I respect and admire your wisdom. It is a promise that I will seek to understand and not judge, to stand by you before I question and to trust you enough to be truthful. Because, when I tell you that ‘I love you’, it is a promise that our love will always be unconditional. Yet it is also an acknowledgement of the fallibility of its human vessel, my heart; which may falter in its sacred commission to express in its depth, or personify in its true sublimity, the devotion that love inspires.
The day is yet nestled among the folds of unseen, unknowable tomorrows, and the time lies buried within the sands of life’s unfolding mysteries that trickle through the narrow, ever present moment; when I shall blow these words into the winds, scattering the delightful secret that I have treasured for so long. For that day, I have much to prepare, as I wait for time to reveal your secrets to me and find out what you mean when you tell me, you love me too.
