I speak not love
unless my arms already testify it,
unless I hold thee fast
till sense grows light
and balance yields to sweetness,
as though the body gladly spends itself
to prove the truth it carries.
I promise not that I shall miss thee when I go,
for I have taken thee entire—
not as memory,
but as breath and inward life;
thy being so received within my own
that absence finds no dwelling place.
Thy voice inhabits still my hearing,
settled gentle as the close of day;
it rests there,
asking nothing,
needing no return.
Thy laughter widens all my inward rooms,
and in thy smile
the morning learns itself anew.
We meet, it seems, in ordinariness—
a quiet way,
an hour inclined to kindness,
the world composed as if it knew us well.
Time then.. walks softly,
moving as one who has passed this path before
and means no harm.
Yet love is patient in its rising.
It ascends.
It grows within the nearness of thy breath,
within the sweetness borne upon the tongue
when silently thy name is said—
rich and yielding,
lingering in warmth,
leaving joy where it abides.
Each moment bears the next aloft.
Each touch becomes a knowing
that asks no speech.
The air itself grows full of meaning.
Even the future pauses,
listening.
Then comes the height.
There is an hour
when love exceeds all figure,
when it commands the body’s full assent—
the heart made quick,
the breath drawn close—
and wanting,
pure and unescaped,
stands openly revealed.
There I hold thee,
as though all weight were gentle,
as though yielding were not an end
but an offering.
All sense overflows:
thy warmth,
thy nearness,
the quiet marvel
of thy life beside my own.
After, the descent is tender.
Time returns, yet altered—
slower, kinder—
and we pass downward through shared stillness,
through sweetness lingering upon the mouth,
through the sure knowledge
that something chosen us irrevocably.
At last, the truth made plain:
Neither distance shall disturb this,
nor years make it less,
nor place estrange
what has been so fully taken in.
Such love does not wander.
It abides.
It lives within the marrow of the hours,
within the steady framing of the heart.
It waits for us,
calm and certain,
whensoever we arrive.
Written by Marguerite Grace
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verse, possies, sonnets, and short stories 