Our death

My boy pulled me out of a dungeon I had been trapped in for far too long. He reached out his hand and lifted me from an ocean of misery I was certain I would drown in.

Sometimes I wonder if he is a  savior, or simply a lover? Perhaps I call him extraordinary because I had never experienced a love like his before. Or perhaps he truly is extraordinary.

He is not the kind of man people usually glorify. He does not spend his days in the gym, nor does he fit society's conventional standards of beauty. He is not always eloquent, and words do not come easily to him. Yet his actions speak with a sincerity that words could never match.

People often say it is wonderful to fall in love with someone who writes poetry. But I have written countless poems for him, and still they feel inadequate. No verse, no metaphor, no carefully chosen line seems capable of expressing everything that lives within my heart.

When I say he was there for me when no one else was, I mean it with every part of my being. It was not only during life's great tragedies; it was in the smallest, most ordinary moments. The little things that seem silly to others mattered to him. He helped me through them all. He showed up every single time.

Even in sickness, even in my darkest days, even when I had given up on myself, he never did. He believed in me when I had nothing left to believe in.

The only thing that frightens me is the thought of my own death. How would he survive losing the woman he loves most, the woman with whom he dreamed of spending a lifetime? I cannot imagine it.

And strangely, I never fear his death. Because in my heart, his death would feel like our death. We have become so deeply woven into each other's lives that imagining one without the other feels impossible.