This Is How I’ll Love You

When the sun rises, brushing the skies with its bright, vivid, cascading shades of orange, red, and yellow, as the earth begins its slow, gleeful, eventual thaw, as we forget and relive, as our hands grow numb, chilled by the winter breeze, the rising sun lights your hair, looking a deep shade of crimson, I will love you.

I’ll never forget the dark times, the good times, the secret times. Love, as they say, is too short; forgetting, so long, and memories of it, everlasting. I’ll love you before, during, and after; and I promise, I’ll always remember. I’ll love you from the feet that’s walked a million miles, to the eyes that’s seen a million people, I’ll love you from the fingers that’s touched a million objects, a million blades of grass, I’ll love you a million times and I’ll love you another million.

My love will grow in your brief absences. My love will encompass you in your presence. It will be a generous love, a stifling love, a distant love. It will be a remorseful love, a caressing love, a comforting love. It will be a destined love, a bizarre love, a jealous love, but above all, it will be a genuine love; a love so true, so real, so modest, so painful, so fearful, so anguished, so hateful, so spiteful, so infinite, so imperfect.

My love of you is a coarse love, a fine love; a brutal love, a tame love; I’ll love you in more ways than one.

When the smoke rises from the building tops, just beyond the smokestacks, the wisps disappear into the air; and although they dissipate, you are certain it is there, in existence, before, during, and after. When the sun rises, illuminating the skyscrapers beyond, you are certain of the figures behind the glinting windows. You are certain the way you are certain you will rise after you close your eyes; you are certain you will die the way everyone else before us has died; you are certain of your existence, your mortality. When the world around you quiets down to a murmur, when the sun has set, leaving empty, quiet nights in its wake, there will be someone holding your numbing hands — me.

And this, this is how I’ll love you.