i have taken a new lover

What a surprise, to find her now after all this time, right in front of me and always waiting for me simply to be seen, heard, smelled, touched. To wake with her near is bliss, early in the day when the thunderclouds are so close you could reach up from where we lay in a rumpled nest of blankets and pillows and tickle their bellies just to hear them rumble with glee. She cannot see too many sunsets, and I can almost see her savor the sunrise as if it is melting on her tongue. She came, calling out across a vast desert of lonesomeness, smoothing away worries and reminding me that the scrapes of life heal if we can just give them enough time, if we can just give...

She is just my height so we see eye to eye on everything. She is always either twirling her shock of brown hair or pulling horseflies from it. She rises early with me, with gusto and a sheepish smile for the pleasure of having been so near for a whole night, and we greet the day together, pumping through a bike ride and panting through a run until the still rising sun is all glisten and glint on tanned summer skin. Her laugh is gold gilding on any given moment, and I can't seem to get enough of it. I will do almost anything to make her smile.

She loves everything about me, and tells me so at any moment when I may not expect it, sneaking compliments and blessings into the daily routine as if they were as common as offering a glass of water - verbal multivitamins I've started calling them. She loves to eavesdrop, sunbask, full moon frolic. She sings loud along with the music in any car or bar but will sit quietly for hours reading the paper until some injustice makes her exclaim at the entropy of the world. I marvel at her body, voice, posture, attentiveness to beauty... i don't know what I've done without her for so long...

I have taken a new lover. She has my heart in her hands and each day holds it with more reverence and compassion and patience than I thought I ever deserved. When I am with her, my ego sees it is no longer welcome and takes a seat in the back of this great revelry of mind and body and person. She is what I have been waiting for in secret, in the dark, in a smaller space where i couldn't stretch all these muscles yet untested. I woke one morning, beside myself, and found tucked away and waiting this great heart wrenching, toe numbing, love for... me. How strange to come to love yourself at such an opportune moment., to find all the comfort and companionship I thought I had been missing tucked into each muscle fiber and cushioning each vertebrae. How wonderful to discover the constant companion that is our own being, our own marvelous dynamic and effervescent being. I have begun a long-term relationship with myself, no holds barred, no secrets, no reasons for leaving, and I feel it is the start of something from everything.