Why Do I Love You?

Because there were days before I even met you when I missed you.

Have you ever felt like that? Gripped by a longing you cannot place anywhere? Looking for a face you cannot find; and a hand that fits yours, and someone who wants you as much as you want them?

And I know we wanted each other.

Because when we first met we danced. That was such joy, to move together like that; to tell our story to each other through movement, through eyes meeting, and through open mouthed pleasure. So much clearer than words. So much in a glance, or in a quick touch and tumbled bodies, and the silent standing and knowing.

Because wonders happened. We have a real Christmas time of wonders. And I hear people say, “Things like that have never happened to me.” Then I feel the blessings run through us, as expanses of wonders open to my gaze, and I want to drop some of them into peoples lives who they have, “never happened to.”

I like to think such stardust is infectious. So I sprinkle it around me. I drop some into everything I do, smiling as I wonder if the person who eats the bread or reads the story will know where the bubbling, smiling stream in them came from.

I especially love to trickle it through my eyes to the children I pass. They are so quick to catch it.

Because we played, we flew, we exulted in each other. What I remember is being then in the first day of things, in the garden of innocence, where guilt, or sorrow, time or distance hadn’t ever invaded. I never saw them with us in that place, and we never invited them in. People don’t live in that new day of things — not many– so you can’t tell them. Well, you can try, but something tells me they will think you are lying or covering up what they call “the truth”.

Because of the splendour of loving like that. Because of the totality of it. I was made whole. It was shocking, wonderful, even painful at times to be so everything, so all at once. That was how we came to be married, because one and one don’t make two in that condition — they make one.

And there was the ending of things, and the beginning of things, all at the same time. Life is like that at the peak — Alpha and Omega together. Kaligrowlf. And the ripples of that are still moving across the waters of our lives. Endings and beginnings.

Because yesterday was a lifetime away. There was a cusp, maybe like you see on the moon, where there is a distinct line, one side of which is light and the other night.

So it was with me. Before that cusp you were only in my life as intuitions, as disembodied voices. I knew I was waiting, but I didn’t know how long, or even if you would come. Then suddenly I crossed the line of the cusp and you were with me, as you were with me today. Warm, real, laughing, troubled, everything.

So yesterday is a lifetime away, and it is recognised how difficult it is to remember past lives.

Because you and I dream dreams, and people them with our creations. We build and form things in that place people call imagination. But the way they use the word they make it sound like an unreal pastime. But our dreams bring things to life, make dwellings and doorways, possibilities and futures. Haven’t we had a child and built a dwelling?

Because we love each other. Yes that is a strange word — love. What does it mean? Does it mean we feel emotions for each other? Well, yes! But it’s not just that. Does it mean we want to share with each other, to talk, to make love, tell secrets and share confidences, give meaningful things, share a bath, call, give time to? Yes, yes, but there’s more.

There are strange things like the fact that however far away you are, I feel as if you are near. Like the completely irrational sense I have that we are sharing life, though thousands of miles separate us. That love which in me lives like a beacon of your existence, a positioning star guiding us both to some harbour I now trust we shall reach yet have never seen.

My darling – I will meet you there – as I promised I would meet you here.

That is love.

Copyright ©2005 Tony Crisp