There are some people we meet too quickly. There are times when we learn to appreciate those around us belatedly and through the years we look back and wonder what could hav happened if we were the people we grew into later. There's usually a trail of seconds unaccounted for that generally add up to the what could have beens and all of the what ifs, what minute thing could have gone differently to land us in a better place than how we left things. Maybe it would have played out the same, maybe it wouldn't have, but this is about the time when my luck rears it's huge head in the story. Of all the people that I needed to see, to make things right with, if it ever could have been made right, Natalie you were the last person I thought I'd ever get the chance to. Not meaningfully, not face to face where you could see the truth for what it was. But we did. The ugly parts that we put behind the both of us in attempts to watch the forests flourish despite our old fires.
And now with an older heart and bright new breath that feeds my brain, I will tell you every day houw much better the world is with you just being here. WIth your voice rining through the night when nothing else sounds right. With your bright, beautiful eyes that cut through me so quickly. Knowing that at the end of things, if the world drifted away that you would still be here with stars circling around your head. We are not always the same song, but no one knows the refrain no matter the melody as well as you do. When I say that you're made of the sun and the ocean breezes, every time that I've compared you to light that keeps the world spinning, when you're Venus, it's just the truth. It's a weary truth that I'm sure you've heard too many times, but I hope that I have several hundered times more to try to think of new ways to tell you how much you mean to me.
The world is hard, and god I wish you didn't have to be. I could tell you how resiliant you are, how strong you've always been and will probably continue to be long after I've given in and found a cottage and bake cookies later in life, but it's stuff you know. It's stuff that you've known the whole time. I'd say if there's no you, there's no me, but if we're being very honest if there's no you, I would drag you back.
Natalie, you're the soft Earth under me when I need to hide and rest, you're the fire that heats a heart and keeps me warm, you're the breath in my lungs when I can't remember my name and can only breath out. You're the sun in my skies and the ocean that calls me back when I'm homesick. When I say you're my world or the good things in this life, I mean every word. All the quiet nights where you spent your time and love on me when I was shakey and couldn't find my legs, I"ll never be able to say what it meant to me, there won't ever be enough words for how happy I am that you're in my life now, when it's good, and when it was bad, too. Refinding one another after all the broken bits fell away and everything after there is more precious to me than anything I've ever had. I love you endlessly and always.
