always you.

I think I could play back your heart beat for you. I think my ear is just automatically attuned to it. I have it memorized. I love the sound of it beating against my ear. There is something magnificent about the boom booming of your mighty heart underneath the weight of it all. I think I have it all memorized...that moment, where my head is resting against your chest... I think my skin could paint a picture of the experience. My forehead, pressed against the scruffiness of your five o'clock shadow...my ear next to the warmth of your skin. My cheek relaxing into the sound of the low grumble that your lungs make while you dream. The rhythmic thumping of your heart. Your arm is wrapped around my back holding me. My arm is draped across your chest, feeling it rise and fall with each breath.

How do I describe how I love these moments? How do I communicate so that it's enough to have it all memorized, permanently, on my heart and on yours? How do I make it so vivid and so powerful so as to last me for a lifetime? What if in the dust of that hell hole your beautiful thumping stops?

The idea of it seems so far removed from me and yet so present. As I pour my eyes out over the news like a hawk watching its prey, and as my ears memorize and analyze the current data that is going on over there, tell me how I should feel. Tell me how I should think. Tell me how to be okay. Tell me everything is going to be okay and you're going to come home alive...both physically and mentally. Promise me that. Lie to me.

Okay, don't lie to me. It's not the lie that I really want. It's the promise of a notion that I don't think I know how to believe. This is just too many times. This is just too many years. This is just too hard.

So I write. I write over and over and over again. I write so that on those random days when you have the internet, and those random days that might come when I need to remember our version of beautiful, I have this documented. I write so that you will always know the depth of my love.

You have been my heart's greatest beauty. I didn't know I was capable of loving someone like I love you. I didn't know I was capable of letting someone love me, like you do. I didn't know I was capable of laughing, and smiling, and enjoying a life that is so beautiful without constantly waiting for the hammer to drop and the agony to pour in. I didn't know that I would ever have children. I didn't believe I would ever enjoy the experience of it. I didn't believe I would be able to survive the demise of this beautiful picture that we had, and the rebirth of it. I didn't believe that I would get to enjoy life. I didn't believe it would ever come.

Your heart beat is relevant to me. What haunts me is the idea that in the moment when it stops, you won't be surrounded with love, with my love. It haunts me more than I know how to explain. What haunts me is the idea that when it stops beating, mine will stop being surrounded with yours.

Suddenly the grumbling of your breath stops for a moment and you hold me tighter. Maybe it's the wetness that has poured out of my eyes onto your skin. Maybe it's the reality that these moments are about to stop for a long time. Maybe you heard my silent tears.

Truth is I am mad about you. Truth is I'm smitten beyond any ability to communicate that. Truth is in love is such a tiny pin drop of words into an enormous ocean of emotions. Truth is you're my best friend. Truth is, the idea that your heart will stop beating, scares me awake. Truth is this could very well be the end of the world as we know it. Truth is I don't want to get up from this moment, from this experience, and let you walk away, get on a bus and leave. Truth is I don't want to be some stupid pillar of strength when it feels like my whole freaking universe is crumbling around me. Truth is, I don't want to be thinking about and worrying about the other women in that place who are crumbling too. Truth is I don't want to smile and be brave and supportive when I am so. damn. angry that you are going over there again. Truth is my heart is breaking more than I know how to say and I feel so helpless and so angry over this weakness that I have when it comes to you. Truth is some sick aspect of myself would rather stop loving you under some dumb guise of a notion that it means it wouldn't hurt me so intensely to let you go there... Truth is, it doesn't matter how angry I am or how much it hurts me, I will still love you like a lunatic until the sun falls from the sky.

When you ask me why I'm so angry, it's because it is so much easier to be angry than to be crying. It is so much more convenient, and it doesn't force me to face the fact of this upcoming moment. It's so much easier to shout at you because I can't shout at the Army, or the idiot who decided you should go again so soon...even though I hate doing that to you. I shout at you so that I am not curled up in the fetal position crying over and over again like a crazy person. I shout because I can't wash you out of me, or cry you away. I shout because it hurts in more ways than I am capable of saying. I shout because it hurts you in the exact same ways and that hurts me even more!

But right now I don't want to be angry. Right now I suppose the root of the agony is coming to the surface. Right now the thump thumping of your heart beat is beating away the screaming in my mind, and your rib cage is holding me up under the weight of this all. Right now your skin is wooing me to sleep. Right now the low grumbling of your breathing is fighting away my fears. Right now your arms are keeping me safe from the dreams that scare me awake. Right now the scruffiness of your five o'clock shadow is tickling me to smiles. Right now you are here, next to me. Right now we are tangled up in the mess that is each other. Right now is something beautiful, and I don't want to let it fade away...