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How did I get so lucky?
I ask myself this as I watch her over the waves of two computers, watch her fall asleep to the sound of my voice and my breathing and my presence. I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful; never seen the human embodiment of a love song come to life before my eyes, even as she sleeps.
Pictures do her no justice; pictures never capture her soul. No – it’s too playful, too fleeting to want to be caught. Come and catch me, it sings, as her storm-across-the-waters eyes glitter at me through what can only do her half of the justice she deserves. I could stare at her image for hours, and yet still there are things I have yet to fall in love with, things I have yet to discover. Things a simple camera could not reveal to me, even if it tried.
I could wax poetic all day about her eyes, in fact I have, but this is something much bigger than just those eyes. My heart cries out with joy every time she looks my way, every time she says my name or says those three words (“I love you,”) that make me want to cry and sing and dance and scream from the roof that this is the person I have gotten.
When God knit me together in the womb, did he give me a piece of her and her a bit of me? When he had both of us in mind, did he tie our lives together, twine them through one anothers’ and set us free? Did he create her with bits of the heavens, color her eyes with the dusk sky, paint her lips with the cherubs’ song, give her smile the first mornings’ rays?
Did he borrow some of the devils’ wit, give her the tongue off a snake; smooth and delicate and oh, so intricate? He must have placed gold in her heart, given her laugh a thousand precious stones, sang her soul into being himself. The clay he shaped her body with was soft and immaculate, purposeful and gentle.
And yet, when I hold her, I cannot help but thing how perfectly my hand fits into hers, how easily our silence is, how tender and sweet her ministrations are to me. The voice she uses towards me is a thousand times more gentle than with anyone else, except maybe a puppy, and it makes my very being soar.
When she walks, all I see is grace; when she sings, all I can hear is the romantic crackle of an old record player; when she laughs, all that I hear is the joy of a thousand children; when she tells me she loves me, my heart weeps.
The pictures she takes of me are surreal - it’s almost as if she’s painted me into being with the very lense, focusing on the beautiful parts of me that I had never bothered to see before. To her, I do not only exist, I thrive.
To her, I am half her heart, I am all she sees, I am so much more than I ever thought I could be. How did someone as simple, as tainted, as broken as me get such a masterpiece as she?
As a child, I dreamed up princes that rescued me from towers and carried me off into the sunset; love that was instant and perfect and so, so unrealistic. In a way, I suppose, she did rescue me.
But it wasn’t from a tower, or from a terrible dragon, or another enemy my six year old mind conjured up. No, it was myself. When all I wanted to do was bleed, to make myself hurt, to drag my body through the mud so all it could do was feel again - she took my hand.
She was the one who pulled me from the rubble, who took all of me in - scraped knees, bleeding heart, teary eyes - brushed me off, and decided that she was going to love me. Decided she was going to stand beside me, to let this broken mess of a person lean on her and dirty her clothes and ask her for her heart.
While I went off and chased the men I decided were my princes, while I took parts of her and made her watch as I dug myself deeper and deeper into a hole, she stayed. She waited. This lovely, beautiful, saint of a woman watched, and waited, and listened.
I went off to figure myself out, only to come back to her and offer my heart, as battered as it was. I hadn’t expected her to take it; but she had smiled, pulled me to my feet, and instead offered me hers.
How did I get so lucky?
This woman, who was sculpted by Michelangelo, painted by Da Vinci, written by Shakespeare, composed by Beethoven, and breathed into by God himself - she loves me.
If she is the sun, then I am her moon; if she is the day, then I am the night; if she is the sea, then I am the sand; if she is the sky, then I am the clouds.
Never could I dream of overshadowing her, never could I hope to outshine her, never could I break her, never could I give her away, never could I think of another the way I think of her.
She is a masterpiece. Not even this could do her justice.
How did I get so lucky?