We were so young back then....

And a part of me will be all the way back at that
night when a ring encircled your trembling finger,
the dark winter lake where you said yes and rushed 
over me like those waters flowing beneath ice,
silently claimed in the clear winter moonlight
like a piercing arrow I've never recovered from,
the only wound I've ever wanted to keep open.

You were more familiar with numbers and stars
because math explained our tethers here
but heavenly bodies blaze to glow upon us
a celestial hint of what we could all be
even if we seem so small and helpless
against their unfathomable immensities.

I almost understand this mystery when
pulled inside you to see constellations 
collapse as rivers of wild pulsing starlight
and rainbows exploding through eyes
I started to see everything in,
universes folding and unfolding 
in the raw joy of what we'd come to hold.

We can only stay young for so long,
I could give you so many things in time,
roses with petals that no longer shiver
in nervous hands like on our first date,
I could give you cards or teddy bears,
chocolates that would melt and drip
from your mouth like a decadent rare liqueur
but wouldn't compare to the natural sweetness
forever blossoming from deep within you. 

I could give you stones cut from the earth,
shaped to a brilliant iridescence that tell
of what spectrum may mark the soul
and they would be intimate keepsakes,
something like a beautiful secret clutched
between us that can only impart shards
of an entire story that is more than a vow to keep
these skins sacred and separate from all others.

So feel it when my arms lace around your waist,
a thrum rising from bone to marrow to soul,
the first time you ever made love,
the first time your heart completely broke
because our pain will always tell the truth
even if we may feel completely helpless
against its unfathomable immensity.

So feel when our lips meet soft before hard,
so tentative at first as if pressing more could break
the molecules of something so beautiful yet 
as fragile as we were when first entwining before
delicious pressure simmers into possessiveness,
I can taste all that you are and will be here
and even if we may not be so young anymore,
time only a gives a new fury to this smoldering hearth.

And a part of us was scared of such perfect symmetry,
the animalistic push and sweet throbbing pull,
the steady thunder of your heart in my hand still 
wounded from the same arrow loosed years ago,
the strange tenderness afterwards because
we once didn't know what was worth aching 
for in the quiet beyond this feral storm,
beyond a tangled lock of spilled hair,
eyelids closed while mouthing a name,
the mystique of a smooth craned neck,
all the little details flashing between
when we know what true nakedness is.

So feel our breaths flutter against bare skin,
air between us anointed with pure heat,
fire still sating all the familiar places
soon to calm like the sweeping mist that 
covers the earth long after fragrant rains,
clasping tightly to keep me in as long as you can
within a velvety core I've never wanted to leave
while I place one long kiss against your hand 
before it enfolds mine and we're already 
two lifelines that will merge again and again.

We were once too young to understand
what we were really giving each other
but maybe that was for the best,
to not know how love was made or lost yet,
to be helpless and move together
through these unfathomable immensities.

We're old enough now to take our time,
to understand the raw joy of all that we hold.