“I might be the writer, but you’ll always be the words.” ~ Ben Maxfield

Someday,

I will sit with you atop our mountain, on that rock that looks like a person, and just stare out at the valley below, at the hill we climbed together, the one filled with tripping roots and obstacles, and all those steep, jagged rocks. 

The one we both not so secretly know is our metaphor. 

Someday, we will camp and build fires and sleep inside a small, cozy tent together after traversing trails, after cycling over bumpy terrain, after inhaling and exhaling outside beauty from every direction.

We will slowly sip two glasses each of some unpretentious, deep purple wine, letting its ripe, fruity, mocha sweetness weave its dreamy magic into our bloodstream, through our heart chambers. And we won’t talk much, because we have both said enough for one day.

I will get tipsy with you and we will dance our asses off to some expert level cover band, in some dive bar downtown, happily singing along, swinging and swaying to “Brown Sugar,” our eyes locked and smirking, in the moment. For there will be nothing more important than these lively dialed-in moments between us; the ones we’ll stash away to, the ones we’ll store like snapshots in a shoe box, mere memories, like piles of mental files.

Someday, I will stand tall on the sidelines and watch you escort your once upon a time little girl down her wedding aisle.

I will watch you dance with her, not awkwardly, not self-consciously, just purely proud, a beaming papa, with a smile so complete it completes me too. 

I will watch you and be filled to the brim with a strange new love for you, a love that somehow didn’t exist before that very minute, a love from the deepest unexplored canyon inside my soul.

I’ll barely be able to hold it, I’ll be so full.

Someday, every day we will make love in some kind of way; with our words, with our touches. But we’ll f*ck a lot too. We’ll moan and groan, and make wild-eyed monster-type faces, toggling between open-mouthed breaths, and thin, determined lips, and dramatic nose flares.

I’ll be turned on thoroughly just by the set of your jaw. We’ll take and give until depletion, our bodies bumping in sweet, sweaty unison, in primal, contradictory acts of selfishness, selflessness, greed, and grace.

We’ll collapse, and laugh, and rest, and then make a heap of salty food that will taste like steaming, satisfied happiness on a plate. 

Someday, we’ll tackle all of life’s little and big problems together, knowing that our love—and how we finally came to be—is no longer one of the problems we must tackle.  

Someday is a fantastic dream, so let’s keep going.  

Someday, I’ll be yours and you’ll be mine, we’ll simply go together like two sturdy little weathered beach cottages sitting side by side at the end of a dirt path, hidden in the dunes, facing the ocean waves.

I’ll find a rock and paint it and give it to you for your birthday and you’ll pretend to like it, pretend to treasure it, pretend it’s a “decent piece of art,” but only because you love me.

And I will know that you pretend, but I will not bring it up, I will not accuse, because pretending to love a thing sometimes comes with the territory of genuinely loving the person who made it.

And someday, when you misplace it by accident, when that ugly little colorful thing you didn’t really like goes missing, you will be crushed.

You will walk around flustered and just a little bit empty, because a piece of your heart is gone.    

Someday, we will try new things together, like cold sleeping in a yurt for three days, and complicated recipes that require seasonings I’ve purchased from earthy website companies that also sell crystals and sage bundles for smudging away negative energy.

You will scrunch your nose and reluctantly agree that although the food is quite weird, it’s surprisingly delicious.

But you will also say, without hesitation, that you could live without “freezing your balls off in the middle of nowhere.”

Which is fine, but we’re still doing it.  

Someday, when the skies are a bit cloudy and I am eating toast in front of my laptop, you’ll catch me weeping over something I wrote, something that moved me deeply, something from my own creative spark, my own mind, something that spilled onto a page like paint on a blank canvas, and you will rub my shoulders, but you will not ask to read it, because you’ll know that it belongs to me.

You will casually take a bite of my toast, just a little bit on the crusty side, a dryer section. You will not go near the soft buttery middle, because you know that one particular bite is sacred to me. You learned that the hard way.

Someday, you’ll bury me because we both know that I will leave first.

Someday, when that happens, you will feel warm and cold at the same time.

It will be bittersweet, and you will not be able to recall a time in your life when I did not occupy most of the space inside it.

Even though it took a while, even though the odds were stacked, even though we both made that huge, horrifying mess we had to painstakingly clean up. Even though we came out the other side whole and free. Even though we knew our love was a risky business at best.

You will still feel me around you everywhere you go.

You will know that you were once loved entirely, in the best way possible. Through trials and triumphs, you were seen, and heard, and known; and I will continue to live inside that part of you that can’t forget. 

Someday, none of the things we worry about so much today will matter at all.

All that will matter is our story, a story that almost wasn’t. All that will matter are the chances we took, how we hedged our bets. All that will matter is a life spent together, the someday we acquired, the bravery it required after deciding long ago, that pining was for fools.