The trouble with locking myself up in a room with you for the weekend is that I'd be more than happy to stay there with you forever, just flipping channels or watching DVD's the whole time. I'd never go anywhere else again, because it feels like with you right there with me I've got everything I need.

Well, except maybe for the occasional walk to the grocery to pick up a bag of potato chips. And maybe a Dr. Pepper.

So it's been three years since we first got together, and I'm told by many that that's a good number, a pretty impressive number, that it's a good long amount of months and weeks and days and hours and seconds, and I guess I'm glad, but really, I think, in the end the numbers and units don't matter much because I could stay with you forever and never realize the time.

And when you are faraway, just remember that we are bound by symmetry and energy and memory and heart - and many other things that are greater than simple distance alone.

I'd like to keep you from all the sorrow in the world. If I could, I'd like nothing more than to hold you at all times and keep you safe at all times. This is love - I'm told, by a million songs and poems and greeting cards. I'd like to make your happiness like an arrow that shoots and pierces through every moment of your day, like a stream that flows into all parts of you.

I would like make everything good in your life stay with you. I would like to give you more than just a happy ending. I would make it so there would be no end at all. I would like to lie with you in bed for an afternoon, forever, and ignore whatever is on the TV.

But if I can't do that, then at least let me stick around when the sorrows do come. Tell me when you are sad or afraid or when you start to feel like a great big mess no one can clean up - because, truth be told, I know a little about what that's like, too. Let me be there to listen to you, at first, and who knows, maybe after a moment or two, we can figure something out. After all, this is love too, says a million songs and poems and stories everywhere.

I love you. Tell me why you're sad.

The world is a tiny, dirty street, dark and drowned in malice of strangers, surrounded by heated, merciless profanities. But here you are. You are the only pretty thing in it. I will pick you up and take you home and keep you with me, always.

They don't make them like you where I come from. I think I shall have to go back there someday and tell them that they should. No one has ever kissed me better than you have. With a kiss, somehow, you say all.

Perhaps someday, we will finally understand just why it is so hard to speak or write about happiness. Why it is that we spill over with heartbreaking synonyms and deep melancholy analogies when we are lonely, yet struggle so hard to say a thing or two about being happy - about having this kind of light inside that won't go out, illuminating the rest of the way, even in the darkest places, no matter where it leads. Sadness is unfathomable and deep - this we know. But maybe happiness is even deeper. Perhaps this is why when joy becomes an extreme, we are moved to tears. Perhaps this is why anything we say when we try to describe it sounds simple and trite and completely inadequate.

Perhaps someday, we will understand more and know more and come up with better words. But until then, please forgive me and my simplicity: You make me happy. There is nothing in this world that makes me as happy as you do. No sorrow can live in my heart as long as I keep you there. And even if I don't have the right words or the right kind of light in me, I will still keep looking for ways to try and make you happy, too.

Someday, when I am much, much older, I will remember the warmth of your naked body and the gentle strength of your big hands on our late afternoons together in bed and I will feel a stir in my tired bones and for a moment or two, I will be young and happy and filled with desire again.

You make me feel like a kid the night before a school field trip. I toss and I turn, I dive in and out of the covers, but it's no use. I'm too excited, too giddy, too busy thinking. And it's not because of the places I'm going, which is probably the zoo, the park, or some musty old unmaintained museum I've been a couple of school trips before.

No, the destination doesn't matter to a kid on the night before the field trip. It's the moment of waiting, the hours before the actual event, when she looks forward to having a day outside of the classroom, a different kind of day. She feels ticklish all over; inside, it feels like little fish are swimming in her stomach, blowing bubbles. She thinks of the day ahead and it feels like it'll be a great day, a new day, a fun and exciting day, maybe the best she'll ever have.

I wish there were some other way to say "I love you". I've realized that when I say "I love you", "I" have nothing to do with it. "I" am inconsequential. "I" am expendable. "I" could very well be someone else. "I" have been anyone at all. If "I" were not here, you would be, perhaps different, in some way, some little ways, we'll never know, but most likely, largely, the same, and there will be someone else to tell you "I love you". There will always be someone because you are very easy to love. You see many things most people overlook. You understand things most people fear. You try your best to be good and kind and happy at the end of the day. And you laugh at the most delightful things. Yes, you are easy to love. Anyone can see that. And you should know that. And so I wish that there were some other way to tell you "I love you" - to take away the "I", for it hardly matters, and make it about what it's really all about.



Love you.

And if there comes a time that you go looking for me, a time when it feels like I have become too far away, just close your eyes and imagine me; imagine me there with you, because I am where my heart is; imagine me telling you that I love you, because it is true, anyday, anytime, anywhere.

If you think of me this way, then distances will be meaningless. Even time stands no chance at all.

I like it best when the weekend comes around and there are no good movies in the cinema - because it means we'll probably just stay in and I can kiss you all day long.

You are like the old book I keep by my bedside. It's an old thing, this book, with its yellowing and slightly tattered pages. I've had it for years now, and I know it well. You might even say, as they often do, that I know it by heart. I keep coming back to the old chapters, reading the old passages, finding the old sentences, almost thinking of them before even seeing them on the page. But that's the mystery of this old book and its friendly verses (and I suppose, it is also the mystery of you) - it has new secrets to offer, almost every time. And if in time, when the years have passed and I will have read this book one too many times and there are no longer any hidden secrets to discover, in these familiar sentences, in these familiar words, I will find comfort and warmth and some semblance of truth and meaning, even when there is none to be found in this life.

You are like this old book, only better.

Hello, jellybean. I was trying to think of something to write for you, you know, to wish you a happy birthday and all that. And I know it's a day early, but just can't help but think about just how strange birthdays really are. It's strange how we all just get one day out of a whole year. What happens to the other 364 days? I guess it's mostly symbolic, and hey, people love symbolic things. They like big, grand gestures to mark special things and special people. They also like cake and ice cream. And you can certainly have a lot of that when it's someone's birthday.

So yes, birthdays are really strange. And I know it's a day early, but that's why I want to tell you this now: I wish you many happy days, beyond this birthday and all the birthdays that are yet to come; because every day that I know you is a happy one; every day that you're here is a good day to celebrate.

I love you, and I look forward to seeing you grow into a crotchety 80 (or so) year old man.

I had this dream. The room was dark. The pillows were soft. No, I couldn't see anything. But I know it was you. Not just because I heard your voice; but because your hands knew exactly where and how to touch me.

When I think of you, sometimes, my heart starts beating really, really, really fast. And when that happens I start to wonder just how it is that I can make room for this feeling at all. It's so much bigger than me.

Please don't be surprised if I explode one of these days.

Late at night, I close my eyes and wait for sleep to come. And like a little darkness, like a little death, it comes, if I wait long enough. It comes and takes me in. It comes and takes me away from everything. In my little darkness, in my little death, there is no sound, no taste, no sight, and no memory. In my little darkness, I drift away. In my little death, I should have nothing. But always, it seems, that your kiss is the last thing to leave me; the sweet salt of your open mouth is more than a memory, more than a dream. No, it is not the last thing that leaves me. I think it does not leave me at all. It may be the only thing I have when I come out of my little darkness. It may be the only thing that will wake me from my little death.

There are times (only sometimes, you see, and not so often at all) I wonder if there will ever be a day that you will wake and find that you no longer want me; a day that I will have outlived my novelty or whatever little strangeness you found so endearing. Whatever cloudy mist or mysterious haze that came will have passed; and for the first time in a long time, you will see clearly again. You will no longer look at me through a shade of faraway love, or in simple but tender fondness, or even in sheer amusement. Perhaps, not even in morbid curiosity. I will have become old and tiresome in your eyes (still perhaps this is simply me appearing as I really am). And you will tell me I don’t love you anymore, goodbye; and though my heart would break, I would say It’s all right. I knew this day would come.

I think about telling you these things, about this sporadic fear of mine. I wonder if you would protest and say things like That’s ridiculous, or How can you think that, or even No, never (but who can promise never). But before I can even begin (and how would I even begin) you take my hand and give it a squeeze and you look at me in your gentle manner. You often look at me as if you are about to kiss me; and when I think about kissing you I can think of nothing else. So my fear fades again into the distance; some hundreds of thousands of miles away. They cannot reach me and I feel safe; I remember that you were never like the others. Your heart is not so fickle; no, in fact, it is not fickle at all.

(I think of your heart and I feel as if I'm home.)

Still, there will be times (only sometimes, you see, no, not so often at all) that the fear will come back and I will wonder about that day. Forgive me for those times. It is not you or your heart that I doubt. It is my own heart that shows its weakness; it shows the places where it has been chipped from before.