ode to a conversation stuck in my mind

[to a beautiful butterfly]

Yellow,

I hear love, in my mind. And sometimes I touch my memories and they kiss me back.

There were many cold nights where I sat on a set of foreign stairs, lost in a strange city in the middle of Spain. I would look up into the sky, and wonder if I would ever find you. I should have been happy, but I wasn’t. I felt alone in the world.

But this pervasive loneliness that engulfed my life finally met its match with you. I can’t say that it hasn’t returned at times. But, simply knowing that I lived to fight another day to try to climb off the mound and back towards you was what has kept me breathing through the worst of times.

Though, nothing is quite like looking into your eyes.

Being in your presence feels like coming home. It feels like being under a blanket on the couch when brown leaves scatter the ground, and clouds litter the skies. It feels like a perfectly fitting, old t-shirt. It feels like water, in the middle of the Sahara. It feels like God, sending shivers up my spine. It feels like the first cigarette after getting off a long flight. It feels like an ice cold shot of life into my veins, traveling through my body. It feels like a dog spazzing out and jumping into my arms when I walk through the door. And it tastes like the first scoop of ice cream out of a freezing cold pint.

But yet, in the face of these feelings, you are worried that you’ve got your stuff. Well, God knows that I have mine. We all have our stuff. Not being perfect is what makes us human. It is also what makes me love you — your imperfections. Not your perfections. Though, in my eyes you are perfectly imperfect.

Who you are electrifies me, and always has. Not who you feel you have become, but who you are.

We all carry with us our thousand pound boulder on our backs wherever we go. The pain. The shame. We try to numb it with novocaine for the soul, in a thousand different ways. Want not to feel. But what we need is to heal.

I am alive today only because God granted me mercy, instead of justice. I try to carry his grace into every part of my life today. I give you grace. Truthfully, I do not feel you need my grace, no matter what has happened. But I give you every ounce of my grace and understanding, if you think you do.

You will soon tell me the things you need from me to be able to set things right. Admittedly, our stuff is pretty unique to each of us. So, your requirements will likely be much greater than mine are, and rightly so. Our transgressions are vastly different. Mine were similar to the anti-gravity found in a black hole; sucking everything around me into darkness. I’m willing to wager yours are the things that every normal person does, and has done. Shame need not be involved.

Let me tell you a secret. Let me give you the keys to my heart; the things that are, for me, above all else. The only things I ever need to hear — I need not know anything that you do not freely want to share with me.

Just tell me that nobody has ever loved you like I do. Tell me that you have not given your heart away to another. That nobody has ever touched you in the way that I do. That nobody has ever kissed you quite like me. Tell me that there is no one else you would rather be with. And tell me that you’ve never loved anybody else the way that you’ve loved me.

You need not tell me these things today, or even a year from now. But someday, when it feels right, know that these things are all I care about. Nothing else.

-RSM