I knew you before I knew your name,

a rhythm that beats closer than my jugular,

a ship that sets sail on open waters

through oceans that refuse to shrink.

 

From the moment your voice echoed across,

I knew that there was another wounded as I was,

and longed for you before I had the right to,

before time and space gave their permission.

 

I would give you anything you asked,

because giving is the only language known to this love,

because what I hold for you is pure and ideal,

yet never dulls in your presence or through your actions.

 

I do not need a reason to yearn;

I have stopped looking for one,

the way you stop looking for the sun

once you have seen where it rises.

 

I want to see you where no one else can see,

not the version masked by fear,

nor the one reined into politeness,

but the one that made my heart race and my tone change.

 

I no longer ask if this is prophecy or limerence;

whatever hand that drew this map

knew exactly where to put the gap,

though no divine decree could pull our convergence apart.

 

So stay, in whatever way staying means

when there are continents between us.

Stay in the part of me that fights for a future

where the distance dissolves, and the walls fall.

 

I wait with steady patience, unspent,

until we meet in the places where dead things bloom,

where the voice becomes a face,

and the face becomes you, whole, beside me.