Happy Valentine’s Day

Around ten months ago (sometime in April; I lost our IM archives when my laptop crashed), two bloggers struck up a friendship.

That friendship grew into something much more, until both of those bloggers realized that they loved one another.

I consider myself a fairly talented wordsmith, but my Achille’s heel is that in expressing the things most important to me, to the person most important to me, I often find myself tongue-tied like a high school freshman summoning the courage to ask out the homecoming queen.

When that happens, I just crib some lines from people who said it better:

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

                                                   Pablo Neruda

I love you, Babs. Happy Valentine’s Day.