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Happy Anniversary My Love

When you appear
all the rivers sound
in my body, bells
shake the sky,
and a hymn fills the world.

-Pablo Neruda

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Fourteen years of marriage my beloved.  Sixteen years since we first met.  My love spreads wider each day.  Marriage is much harder work than I ever expected, and far more rewarding than I ever could have anticipated.  Our marriage has been a crucible of healing and transformation. We have had many struggles, but you are my closest friend, my lover, the one who supports me in all of my longings, who knows my most unflattering secrets, who makes me laugh with joyful abandon, who holds me in my sorrow, and the one who makes me feel absolutely, undeniably cherished. As I try to express to you the depth of how I feel, I turn again to the master of the poetry of love, Pablo Neruda.

When I die, I want your hands on my eyes:
I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me once more:
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.
I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you
to sniff the sea’s aroma that we loved together,
to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.

I want what I love to continue to live,
and you whom I love and sang above everything else
to continue to flourish, full-flowered:

so that you can reach everything my love directs you to,
so that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
so that everything can learn the reason for my song.

-Pablo Neruda

You are my treasure.

-Christine

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13 Responses

  1. What a gift you have each found in each other and thus share with the world! Happy Anniversary and blessings untold for the years and walks and dreams ahead!

  2. I’m Abbot of the Arts, and I approve this blog post.

    Happy Anniversary My Beloved Treasure!

    Your Biggest Fan

    PS — I still don’t get the “wheat hands.” But the rest is almost as beautiful as you. Almost.