I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I told you this last night, to your ever present question, "What are you thinking?" Yesterday when we walked in the Lauritzen Gardens I heard, for the first time in my life, the whispering of the wind in the trees not as a paean but an ode. And I told you that also. Part of me is frightened by this degree of intimacy, that I will never have any room alone in my head, some space that is still only mine, when I do love you so intensely and utterly
All the things I worry about, the things you tell me not to, not to take things literally--that your ex-wife abused you and left so much damage I'm not sure the pieces can be put back together.
This self of mine now is bright and strong; but letting you in let in even more light. How the cracks and the damage show. You say you don't notice the scars; but you are quicker than I to cover them, and we cannot tell your mother.
Both of us want to be married, but you are still afraid I will turn into some shrew, and where will we live? Not with your parents. Will you be content with the kind of apartment a bankrupt nurse and a teacher can afford? I wonder.
And I hope. During the still hours of the night, twined around you when we are both our most vulnerable and real, I see a face of you no one else sees, I see you.
And I will love you forever.
So I live in hope.
