Love Always Wins by Devi Nina Bingham

My darling,

I have been pondering that sticky subject that new couples, freshly pierced by Cupid’s arrow, sometimes mention in passing. It is a cherished institution, yet one that strikes fear into the hearts of divorcees everywhere. I am speaking, of course, of marriage.

I have been thinking about it because you once mentioned it casually, and I responded with my usual cool skepticism, declaring that I did not want to rush into anything. Understandable, perhaps, considering that I have been married and divorced twice. When one has been burned, one tends to avoid touching the same hot stove again.

And yet, even as I disparaged marriage—that great institution of relational superglue—even as my mouth expressed doubt, my heart was leaping for joy. Not because I consider marriage itself perfect or sacred, but because, when you boil it down, it is a legal and binding contract between two people. But what made my heart leap was the thought that you could envision spending the rest of your life with me. You, such a capable, intelligent, kind, and beautiful woman, would choose me, of all people.

I think I regard you so highly and admire so much of what you have accomplished in your life that I may never completely grow accustomed to the idea of being someone you would choose. Flattered? Absolutely. I was flattered by the mere mention of the M word. But beyond that, I was honored.

It took me several days to become completely honest with myself, and then with you, about what I really felt. The truth was that I wanted that possibility with you. I did not want to protect myself from it. I did not want to build another fortress around my heart just when someone had appeared who made me want to open the gates.

It is a perfectly normal human defense mechanism to avoid whatever has hurt us most. Divorce ranks among life's most stressful experiences, alongside the death of someone we love. In its own way, divorce is a kind of emotional death: the death of a commitment, the death of a shared future, and the death of the dreams two people once held together.

When a marriage dies, the couple's collective dreams often die with it, and two hearts that once promised to travel through life together must find their separate ways. It all sounds so clinical in divorce papers, doesn't it? A few signatures, a legal decree, and the division of assets. But when you actually live through it, you discover that it is one of the most devastating losses a person can endure. Some people never fully recover. It took me six years to process everything that happened in my marriage. Six years to sift through the rubble, to discover which pieces of myself had survived, and to gather the salvageable fragments with which I could begin rebuilding a life.

And then, along came you.

I was not looking for someone worthy of marriage. I was simply hoping to escape the occasional boredom of single life, perhaps enjoy a little lighthearted flirtation, and remind myself that romance had not entirely abandoned the planet. But when a woman of your caliber walks into your life, you cannot treat the encounter lightly. To do so would make you a blind fool, incapable of distinguishing real gold from something merely spray-painted to resemble it.

I knew you were the real thing the moment I saw your photograph. I will never forget my favorite picture of you, which remains my favorite to this day: that beautiful smile worn by a beautiful soul, standing confidently in your work jumpsuit, boots, and hard hat, a tool belt resting on your hip. And somehow, despite all that practical machinery and industrial toughness, you still looked wonderfully feminine and sparkly. Because that is who you are. You contain all these apparent contradictions and somehow make them belong together.

Then I heard your voice for the first time, with its soft, calm tones and charming accent. And then there was your laugh, shy and sexy at the same time. That was when I truly lost my head over you. Your voice has perhaps been the most magnetic force of all. Sound possesses a power that can surpass even physical beauty. A voice can reach places in the heart that the eyes have not yet discovered. It can soothe, enchant, awaken, and draw two people toward one another across distances that seem otherwise impossible to bridge.

Somewhere along this road of getting to know you, I began to realize that I could never bear the thought of losing you. To lose a treasure one has spent a lifetime hoping for would be beyond tragic. It would feel like the end of hope itself. And that is why I have been contemplating a return to the scene of the crime, so to speak: the place where I last abandoned my hopes and dreams of experiencing true communion with another soul.

Because the truth is that we all fear commitment, and perhaps we have good reason to. But I have come to realize that there is something I fear even more than the possibility of being hurt again: The thought of losing you.

You are considerably younger than I am, although, between the two of us, you are undoubtedly the more responsible and practical one. I can be bouncy, silly, and frivolous at times. I am perfectly capable of turning a serious moment into an opportunity for mischief, and I suspect you have already discovered that there is a rather irrepressible child living inside me.

But both of us are necessary in this little universe we are creating.

The sun would be overwhelming without the cool moon to temper its beams. The moon, in turn, has its own mysterious beauty, but it would be a very different world without the sun's warmth and light. We complement one another in ways that neither of us could accomplish alone. And yet, while your temperament may be more like the quiet moon, the sun has lived a little longer and witnessed more devastation. It remembers shining before the moon was drawn into its orbit. It remembers planets that appeared and disappeared, sometimes before anyone had the chance to understand what they meant. So the thought of calling another planet mine is risky business indeed.

This is the difficulty with commitment. It is risky because it involves an exchange, a two-way street upon which both people must be willing to travel. Partnership asks each person to contribute, to give, to compromise, and to remain present even when the road becomes difficult. Equality between two people is not always easy to achieve. Sometimes one person gives more than the other, and sometimes the imbalance goes unnoticed until disappointment has quietly accumulated in the corners of the relationship.

Marriage, then, is a gamble. You wager your heart, your finances, your energy, your time, and your dreams, hoping the other person will reciprocate in kind. And because human beings are gloriously, maddeningly imperfect, we will inevitably disappoint one another at times, even when our love is genuine. One might reasonably conclude that marriage is not always a particularly winning proposition.

So why do we do it?

Because when you find the person who matches your heart, the treasure you have been searching for, you want to do everything within your power to hold on to what you have found. Not because marriage can guarantee that you will never lose someone. We both know that no such guarantee exists. We have lived long enough to understand that promises, however sincere, cannot control every circumstance life throws at us.

But when the heart, after an exhaustive search, finally recognizes its mate, something inside it says, Hold on. Hold on, even if logic protests. Hold on, even if the odds seem improbable. Hold on, even if the distance between you appears too great or your histories suggest that you should know better.

Love does not always look before it leaps. It sees the great divide. It recognizes the danger. It knows perfectly well that there is a possibility of falling, and yet the promise of being completely known, completely seen, and deeply loved proves irresistible. So it leaps. Sometimes it lands on its feet like a cat with nine lives. Other times, it tumbles spectacularly, picks itself up, and wonders what on earth it was thinking.

But have you noticed something remarkable? Love always wins in the end.

Perhaps not always in the form we expect. Perhaps not always according to the timetable we have chosen. But love itself continues. It survives disappointment, crosses borders, outlasts generations, and finds ways to express itself even when circumstances seem determined to silence it. We are built for love. It is woven into the fabric of our humanity. If love did not keep finding a way to prevail, I suspect our species would have destroyed itself long ago. And when the object of our affection is separated from us, the enchanted heart does not necessarily surrender. Distance may inconvenience it, frighten it, and occasionally make it behave like an overwrought fool, but it cannot always persuade the heart to abandon what it knows to be precious. The heart believes in love, sometimes long before the mind can explain why.

And love, in its own mysterious way, keeps finding a way forward. Each passing year confirms this truth for me. And I believe it will be true for us, too. We will face our share of obstacles: distance, our age difference, financial challenges, and whatever other hurdles life decides to place in our path. We will have practical matters to resolve and difficult days to navigate. I am not so starry-eyed that I imagine love will magically remove every obstacle. But I believe that what we have gives us a reason to face those obstacles together.

You may be familiar with the concept of entropy in physics, the tendency of systems to move toward disorder. Left to themselves, things wear down, disperse, and eventually lose the structures that once held them together. I would like to challenge that idea, at least metaphorically, on behalf of love. For love seems to possess a peculiar ability to expand rather than diminish. The more deeply we know someone, the more layers there are to discover. The more experiences we share, the richer our history becomes. Even time, which takes so much from us, can give something back in the form of understanding, tenderness, and the kind of intimacy that cannot be manufactured overnight. Love may not be exempt from the laws of physics, darling, but it seems determined to make its own argument against the idea that everything meaningful must eventually decay.

And so it will be with us, I hope. Our love will grow in depth and meaning as the years pass. Our hearts will continue finding their way toward one another, sometimes leaping before looking, perhaps, but always learning how to grow together. Like a seed that knows, without possessing a scientific understanding of botany, to reach toward the light, we will discover what we need in order to flourish. We will have our sunshine and our moonlight, our seasons of growth and our seasons of rest. We will learn that love is not merely a feeling we stumble upon, but something we nurture, protect, and choose again and again.

And perhaps, one day, we will do what lovers throughout history have done when they discover a treasure they cannot bear to lose. Perhaps we will confront our insecurities and our fears. Perhaps we will dare to defy the lessons of our pasts and reach for one another with the most memorable and romantic of all human promises:

Marriage. There. I have said it without fainting, running for the hills, or requesting immediate legal counsel.

Because this love feels so alive, so special, so urgent, and so wonderfully right. It feels natural. It feels as though something that has been waiting patiently for us has finally found its moment. Dare I say it feels destined? I suspect it does. And if we are indeed being held in the steady palm of destiny's hand, as I rather suspect we are, then I can imagine only one glorious conclusion for us.

For the sun and the moon are a pair, two celestial bodies belonging to the same magnificent universe. They are different in their natures, different in their rhythms, and different in the ways they illuminate the world. Yet each has its place in the great dance of existence. Neither needs to become the other to make the heavens complete.

And perhaps that is what we are discovering, my darling. We need not be identical to belong together. We need not have lived the same number of years, traveled the same roads, or learned our lessons in the same way. We need only to keep turning toward one another, with honesty, tenderness, and the courage to believe that what we are building is worth the risk. Sometimes I think that what we are hearing is the strong, persistent throbbing of a single heart, beating beneath two very different lives.

So keep listening, my love. Mine beats for you.

And I will always need the calm, the mystery, and the quiet beauty of the moon. I will need your steadiness, your intelligence, your kindness, and that wonderful voice that somehow manages to reach me even when you are far away. I can only hope that you will always need my warmth, my laughter, my occasional silliness, and my light with the same urgency.

I cannot promise that we will never be afraid. I cannot promise that the road will always be easy. But I can promise that I am willing to stop guarding my heart against the possibility of happiness simply because I have known sorrow before. I am willing to believe in us.

And today, tomorrow, and for all the days we are fortunate enough to share, I want us to remember this: The future may be uncertain. The distance may be great. The risks may be real. But love is worth the leap. Believe in that today, my darling, and always.

Our love will win.

Always,

Your poet

The Gods Are Dancing by Devi Nina Bingham

 Hindu Goddess Kali doing the Tandava (dance of creation, preservation, and destruction)

You gently tap, tap

and whisper my name

uncharted territory with no map

but I rise for you just the same.

A pop and hip-hop fusion

is happening tonight

love's revolution

and I'm flying as high as a kite.

Your embrace leaves me free

dancing to a beat that only we can see

no words are necessary

when your spirit enters me.

You're answering my body's beat

the best partner ever!

I'll try not to step on your feet

though I'm feeling as light as a feather.

For as long as this music lasts,

keep asking me to dance.

Until The Separation Is Done by Devi Nina Bingham

Hey love, I am calling once more

as you sleep far away

as I walk the ocean shore

maybe you'll dream that we meet halfway.

For my heart has abandoned me for you

and refuses to listen

because with you it found the prettiest view

while with me it is in prison. 

Take care of my heart, love

and bring it back soon

because these two hearts fit like gloves

and without you, I am doomed.

These two hearts that once were one

have never forgotten, hon

and won't let us rest

until the separation is done.

My Darling by Devi Nina Bingham

My Darling,

There are many endearments I enjoy calling you, but none more satisfying than darling, for the word harkens to a different time in history, to the golden age of our grandparents, when sweethearts addressed the object of their affection in ways that left no room for ambiguity. If you were someone's darling, no one doubted that you were chosen and cherished. You were taken, nearly possessed, whether by a lover or by a parent who saw you as the apple of their eye. There was no doubt that you were special, coveted, and held apart from the ordinary world when someone called you darling.

And so, I begin this letter by demonstrating that same devotion, as well as my intent to make you the sole object of my affection. Thus, you are my darling. The word is yours now, as surely as if I had taken it from some forgotten age and placed it gently in your hands. I offer it not casually, as one might scatter pretty words into the air, but with the solemn tenderness of someone who understands that certain words, once spoken, become a kind of vow.

And I am writing a letter instead of a poem because I have amply used the device of rhyme and now seek another time-tested way to express what still hides in the recesses of my heart. A poem can make a beautiful prisoner of a feeling, fastening it to rhythm and rhyme until it gleams like a jewel beneath glass. But a letter allows feelings to wander. It permits a thought to enter the shadows, to linger where it pleases, and to reveal what it might otherwise keep concealed.

Why there are sentiments hidden even from my own conscious awareness is a mystery all artists seek to unlock and plunder. We venture into ourselves as though entering an ancient house after dark, carrying only the small and uncertain flame of our curiosity. Behind one door, we discover a memory we thought long dead. Behind another, a longing without a name. And sometimes, in the deepest room, we encounter a truth that has been waiting patiently for us, as though it knew we would come at last.

Perhaps that is what I am doing now, my darling: entering those dim chambers of the heart in search of the words that I have yet learned to speak. Even after all the poems I have written, I suspect there are still secret passages within me, and that you, without even knowing it, have become the reason I wish to find them.

The heart readily gives up its secrets when touched by true love; it awaits the kiss of its rescuer before divulging its deepest, most tender and fragile elements. These hidden treasures are what I wish to divulge so that we may both better understand the miracle that is love. For this love is clothed in layers of garments, hand-sewn by passions and griefs old and new, each stitch becoming a new memory, each fold a sorrow carried so long that it has almost forgotten the shape of its own nakedness.

Love will disrobe only when it is safe, only when we do not demand it, only when it has been wooed by the many assurances, shown repeatedly, that it is beautiful just as it is. It must be approached with tenderness, as one might approach a frightened creature, lest the slightest movement send it fleeing into the shadows. For love knows its own imperfections more closely and urgently than anyone. It has studied them in secret, held them up to the merciless light of memory, and feared that another pair of eyes might discover what it has spent a lifetime trying to conceal.

Only when it has come to trust the hands reaching toward it will its defensive layers be discarded upon the floor, one by one, so that love's whole self may be seen in the clear light of day. What a solemn and beautiful moment to stand before another soul without the protection of our histories, without the elaborate disguises we have fashioned to survive the world, and to discover that we are still desired, still cherished, still worthy of tenderness.

And that kind of love, stripped of its defenses and fears, is what inspires all artists and lovers. We spend our lives searching for the truth beneath appearances, longing to glimpse the hidden face beneath the mask. Perhaps this is why we paint, why we write, and why we reach for one another in the quiet hours when the world has finally fallen silent. We are searching for what cannot be manufactured or imitated: the naked and unguarded truth of another human being.

For a nude body is infinitely more interesting and fragile than a body heaped up with explanations, excuses, and convoluted stories. The naked form has no argument to make and no defense to offer. It simply exists, beautiful in its vulnerability, carrying the evidence of a life that has been lived. And so it is with the heart. Once its garments have fallen away, we no longer see the person it has struggled to become; we see the person who has been waiting all along to be loved.

As I peer into my soul at the love that stands naked and unashamed before you, I am struck first by the realization that it is neither a he nor a she, but a whole—something that cannot be explained sufficiently by either male or female energies, nor by hard or soft, nor assertive or passive, nor by one quality or its opposite. It belongs to neither side, and yet it belongs to both, as though these opposing forces have finally found a place where they may lay down their weapons and live together in peace.

This love embodies both moods, as the day displays both light and dark. It possesses the fierce brilliance of the sun and the quiet mysteries of the moon, the courage to advance and the wisdom to retreat, the hunger to claim, and the tenderness of release. It is not divided against itself, and it is made more complete by its contradictions.

This love will be both for you. It will undoubtedly rush you, push you, and persuade you, carried by the force of its own desire; but it will also defer to your wishes and regard the smallest peculiarities of your personality as precious and worthy of praise. It will notice the little things you may scarcely recognize in yourself—the peculiar turn of a phrase, the unexpected tilt of your head, and the small habits you have never thought to explain. And it will cherish them, not despite their oddity, but because they are yours.

This love is like the sun and the moon, who coexist peacefully as one opposite yet complementary unit. Each possesses a beauty the other cannot imitate, and neither must surrender its nature for the two to share the heavens. The sun does not resent the moon's darkness, nor does the moon ask the sun to soften its fire. They take turns illuminating the world, and in their separate hours, each makes the other more beautiful.

So my love for you is not one-sided but diverse and versatile. It will not approach you with only one face, but with many, depending upon what expression will most surprise and delight you. At times it will be bold enough to sweep you into its arms before you have found the words to answer. At others, it will sit quietly beside you, asking nothing, content merely to share the same small kingdom of silence. It may arrive as laughter, as tenderness, as an argument made passionately and then abandoned for a kiss. It may be a fire one evening and a candle burning quietly beside your bed the next.

This is not a simple love, my darling. It is as infinitely complex as you are. It contains its own mysteries, its own changing seasons, its own strange and beautiful contradictions. I do not wish to reduce it to a single definition, for I fear that in naming it too narrowly, I might imprison something that was born to be free.

I would rather let you discover it slowly, as one discovers a hidden garden behind an old stone wall: one flower today, another tomorrow, and beyond them, always, another path leading into the unknown. For the more deeply I look into this love, the more I understand that it is not a thing I will ever finish creating. It is a living universe, and somehow, impossibly, it has chosen you as the place where it wishes to unfold.

This naked love is neither jealous nor permissive. It understands that love must offer both freedom and shelter, that a heart cannot flourish if it is forever watched, nor can it feel secure if it is left entirely to the mercy of the world.

When you leave to spread your wings, I will be delighted to see you go, for I know you will return to me more whole and free than when you left. I will watch you rise into the vastness of the sky, carrying my affection with you like a secret sewn into the lining of your coat. I will not mistake your flight for abandonment, nor your curiosity for a lack of devotion. I will understand that some journeys must be taken alone if we are to discover what we are capable of becoming.

And should you wander farther than the borders of our love can comfortably bear, I will gently but firmly invite you back inside the gate. Not to imprison you, nor to clip the beautiful wings that carried you there, but to remind you that even the wildest creature needs a place where it may rest without fear. I shall protect what is precious between us from the elements, tending to it with the vigilance of a gardener who knows that even the most resilient flowers require shelter from certain storms.

And this delicate dance of yours and mine I will navigate carefully, very carefully, so that you always feel the shelter of my love without mistaking it for a cage. I want you to feel its boundaries as you might feel the walls of a beloved home: not as barriers against the world, but as assurances that there is a place where you are known, welcomed, and cherished.

For I wish to satisfy your soul's curiosity and its need to explore and grow, not diminish them. I want the world to enlarge you, to fill your mind with wonders and your heart with new discoveries, so that when you return to me, you bring back the treasures you have gathered along the way. And I want to be equally free to wander, to grow, and to return to you with my own handful of wonders.

Perhaps this is the truest intimacy: not two souls bound together so tightly that neither can breathe, but two souls who know the way home, who can venture into the darkness without fearing that the light has been extinguished, and who choose, again and again, to meet at the same gate—not because either has been commanded to return, but because love has made returning a joy.

This more exposed version of me is privy to your judgments alone. Thus, I will say outrageous things I would never utter in polite company and air my fears and insecurities, which is both a privilege and a burden. There is an intimate freedom in being seen without the protection of one's finest manners, without the careful arrangement of words that makes us acceptable to the world. Here, with you, I may allow the unruly thoughts to escape, the embarrassing truths to rise from their hiding places, and the tenderest parts of myself to stand in the light without immediately reaching for a veil.

You will come to know this unapologetic me, who is more truthful and less bashful. You will see the woman beneath the polished sentences, the one who sometimes contradicts herself, who can be both formidable and foolish, wise in one moment and astonishingly naïve in the next. You will admire my strengths and pity my weaknesses, and you will be certain there is nobody more consequential to me than you—nobody who could ruin me like you if she tried.

What a terrifying privilege it is to place such power in another person's hands. To love is to surrender the map to the secret country of oneself, revealing every hidden passage, every tender place, every wall erected after some earlier sorrow. You will come to know every crack and bulwark in me as intimately as a well-traveled road. You will learn where I am strongest, where I am easily wounded, and where a careless word might reach the little girl I have spent a lifetime protecting.

But because you know me so thoroughly, I trust that you will protect my vulnerabilities and spare me the humiliation of contradiction. You will understand that there are days when my bravado is merely a curtain drawn over my fear, and that beneath some of my fiercest declarations lies a heart hoping you will stay. You will know when to challenge me and when to take my hand; when to laugh at my extravagance and when to recognize the small, trembling truth concealed beneath it.

Some days you will treasure the access and influence your presence carries, marveling that another human being has permitted you to enter so far into the private chambers of her soul. Other days, you may wonder what you got yourself into. I can hardly blame you. I am not always an easy country to inhabit. There are storms here, and unexpected detours, and the occasional volcano that erupts over something as insignificant as a misplaced word. I can be gloriously unreasonable, and I make no promise that loving me will always be a peaceful occupation.

But I am certain that at all times you will go on cherishing me, as I will you, my darling. Not because we will always agree, nor because we will never disappoint one another, but because we will have learned the difference between a person's imperfections and the worth of the person herself.

To be known so completely and loved still—to have one's secrets discovered and one's defenses understood, yet remain precious in another's eyes—is perhaps the rarest form of intimacy. I offer you that privilege, and I accept its burden. You shall have the unvarnished truth of me, my darling, and I shall endeavor to hold yours with the same tenderness.

For once I have entrusted you with the hidden architecture of my heart, I do not wish you to become its master. I wish you to become its most faithful guardian. And I promise to be yours.

And finally, this enduring love will weather the seasons as they change, both in nature and in the private communion of our lives. Time will march relentlessly upon us, as it does upon all living things, and we will become two increasingly fragile and needy people, leaning upon the kindness that has come to define our relationship. Perhaps this is one of love's greatest transformations: that what begins as desire may, with the passing years, become tenderness so deeply rooted that neither time nor circumstance can easily disturb it.

We will certainly grieve as, one by one, we release the pleasures and freedoms that once defined our youth. There will be things our bodies no longer permit us to do, adventures we must remember rather than undertake, and small liberties we once took for granted that will become precious precisely because they are no longer ours. We will have to make our peace with the vulgarities of aging—with its indignities, its absurdities, and its occasional insistence upon reminding us that we are not nearly as immortal as we once imagined.

But I hope we will laugh. Oh, my darling, I hope we will laugh! We will laugh at ourselves and with one another, with a playfulness that perhaps eluded us in our younger years, when we took our appearances too seriously and our imperfections as evidence of some private failure. We will discover the comedy in our creaking joints, our fading memories, our stubborn vanities, and the ridiculous things we may do in an effort to persuade the world that we remain unchanged. And when one of us forgets why she entered a room, perhaps the other will invent a magnificent reason for having gone there in the first place.

For I want us to grow old without growing solemn about it, to meet the absurdities of our declining years with affection rather than shame. Let the world demand dignity from us if it must. Between ourselves, we shall have the greater luxury of being human.

And as the years pass, we will come to cherish in each other those qualities that do not fade with the skin or surrender to the calendar. We will recognize the familiar light in one another's eyes, the humor that survives disappointment, the tenderness that deepens through hardship, and the peculiar ways our minds continue to surprise and delight each other. These are the treasures that time cannot easily diminish. They are not skin-deep, nor can they be measured by the standards of youth. They belong to something far more enduring.

Perhaps this, too, is a kind of passion—a passion that has traveled beyond the body without abandoning it, that has learned to see beauty where the world may see only age. It is the desire to know you more intimately with every passing year, to discover that beneath the changing face I have loved, there remains the same extraordinary soul. And I hope you will find in me that same enduring wonder: not a woman preserved against time, but one who has lived, changed, suffered, laughed, and become more fully herself.

For when youth has loosened its hold upon us, my darling, I want us to discover that love has not diminished. It has simply changed its language. What once spoke through longing and the fever of desire will speak through patience, through the gentle hand extended in the night, through the laughter we share over some private foolishness, and through the quiet certainty that neither of us must face the years alone.

And if the body becomes a more fragile dwelling, let us make the soul a warmer home. Let us grow old together not merely as two people who have endured the passage of time, but as two lovers who have learned, at last, how beautiful it is to be known, to be needed, and to be cherished long after the world has stopped looking.

And we will learn to communicate through glances and small acts of kindness, speaking less as the years pass, for a shared history becomes its own language, a silent knowing that requires no explanation. You will understand the meaning of my look before I have found the words to express it, and I will recognize the unspoken question in your eyes. A hand resting upon a shoulder, a cup of tea placed within reach, a blanket drawn gently over sleeping feet—these will become our conversations, intimate exchanges in a language only we have learned to speak. How extraordinary that, after a lifetime of searching for the right words, we may discover that the deepest truths have always lived in the silence between them.

And so we will accompany our ramshackle bodies and our once-sharp, now somewhat weary intellects toward that final door through which every mortal must eventually pass. I imagine we will approach it with apprehension, certainly, but also with the private humor that has sustained us through so much. Perhaps we will even find something ridiculous to laugh about at the threshold, for I cannot imagine that death, with all its solemn grandeur, could entirely silence our irreverence.

But we will refuse to say goodbye.

Instead, we will say, I will see you soon.

Those words will have to carry everything our hearts cannot bear to speak: the gratitude, the sorrow, the terror of separation, and the faith—however small, however trembling—that love has not brought us this far merely to abandon us at the edge of the unknown.

One of us will go ahead into the Great Mystery, while the other remains behind, keeping our shared memories as a vigil. The one who stays will carry the light of our life together through the long rooms of absence, finding you in familiar places, in the habits we fashioned together, in a passing scent, a remembered laugh, or the sudden recollection of something you once said that seemed insignificant at the time but now shines like a small jewel rescued from the darkness.

There will be days when the silence is unbearable. There will be moments when I reach for you before remembering that you are no longer beside me, and nights when the bed seems impossibly wide. Yet I will keep our memories close, not as relics of a life that has ended, but as living things entrusted to my care. I will speak to you when no one is listening. I will tell you what has happened since you left, what I have learned, what I have feared, and all the foolish little things I know you would have found amusing.

And somewhere beyond my reach, I will imagine you listening.

For that is what you have always done, my darling. You have listened as though my words possessed some secret worth discovering, as though even my most meandering thoughts deserved the courtesy of your attention. You have made me feel that I could speak without hurrying, that I could wander through the corridors of my mind and return with whatever treasures or nonsense I happened to find. What a rare gift it is to be heard in this way—to have another person receive not only the words we speak, but the person we are while speaking them.

And I will count the minutes until they become days, the days until they become months, and the months until they become years. Time will continue its indifferent march, but beneath its passing I will keep faith with our promise. I will imagine that you, too, are counting—not because eternity is a prison, but because even eternity might seem incomplete without the one whose presence made the ordinary world so astonishingly dear.

And then, at last, when my own journey through this life has reached its end, I will come looking for you.

I like to imagine that we have already chosen the place where our souls will rendezvous in the next world. Perhaps it is a garden beneath an unfamiliar sky, or a little house with blue doors and flowers climbing the walls, or a quiet shore where the water carries the last light of day. Wherever it is, I hope you will be waiting there, wearing that expression I know so well—the one that says you have a thousand questions and are perfectly willing to let me begin.

For we will have so much to tell each other.

I will want to know what you discovered while I was away, what mysteries you have solved, what wonders you have seen. I will bring you every story I collected in your absence, every thought I saved for you, every small revelation that seemed incomplete until I could place it in your hands. And you will listen as you always have, with that captivating attention that made even my simplest words feel worth the telling.

Perhaps the Great Mystery will reveal that love was never merely the brief arrangement of two lives upon this earth. Perhaps it was always a promise made in a language older than time, one that neither age nor distance nor death could persuade us to forget.

Until then, my darling, I will love you here, in this imperfect world, through every season it allows us. And when the final door opens, I will not call it goodbye.

I will simply take your hand and say, I told you, I will see you soon.

And so, my darling, though we discovered each other in the twilight of our lives, in the winter rather than the spring, I believe we shall be far happier than most can ever claim. For what we have found is not diminished by the lateness of its arrival. If anything, it is made more precious by the years that preceded it, by all the roads we traveled, the sorrows we survived, and the loves that taught us what was most prescious and we cannot live without.

For we are weaving a coat from many colors and each thread will be dyed in a different shade of love. Some colors will be bright with laughter and desire; others will be darkened by sorrow, softened by tenderness, or made radiant by the simple miracle of being understood. Together, they will become something neither of us could have woven alone: a garment fashioned from our separate histories and the life we have chosen to share.

And it will keep us warm and protected through all the seasons to come. When winter settles around us, we will draw it close. When spring returns, we will wear it lightly, grateful for the warmth it offered us. And when we can no longer remember every road that brought us here, we will still recognize the colors, for each one will remind us of something we have given, something we have received, and something we became together.

Forever, 

Your Poet

Better Half by Devi Nina Bingham

I don't want to lose you

I don't want you walking away

How do I show you what words can never say?

Maybe matching tatoos?

For us, one thing will ever be true

we are two halves of a whole, always.

I don't want to lose you

I don't want you walking away.

Until we are together, we will make do

I am willing to meet you halfway

and choose you new each day

my better half in a heart that goes two ways.

I don't want to lose you.

My better half,

I don't want you walking away. 

Love Drunk by Devi Nina Bingham

 

Sleepless, I reach for you

I cannot even eat

Gone is the life that I once knew.

Love left a bewitching brew

That tastes impossibly sweet

And I drank enough for two.

We are both love drunk, so enjoy the view

To hell with being discreet

Riding this intoxicating corkscrew.

And suddenly, I am a teen at the drive-through

making out in the back seat

'Cause passion feels brand new.

Tell me, what did you do

When you walked down my street?

I am enjoying being a drunken fool.

So come out, put down your tools

Pour a drink and pull up a seat

When you are in love, there are no rules

I am love drunk over a rare and precious jewel.

Gone is the life I once knew

No sleep nor food for either of us two

For we are love drunk

and this is only the preview.