My love,

I love you.

Isn’t this how I’m expected to start, with some dramatic declaration of love? But to say those words, those three words seems to simple. They seem wrong, they seem … almost easy. But love isn’t supposed to be easy, it’s not supposed to be simple. It’s supposed to be warm and comforting, troublesome and traumatic, filled with the potholes of life that come along and take one by surprise.

And yet, still, the words that come to my lips are ‘I love you’.

You are passionate and fierce, destructive and terrifying, you are soft and gentle and so many other things in between. You are the calm in my soul and the storm in my heart and the love that carries me on.

The soft babbling of the brook as you run through the forest, the tormenting cascade that thunders down the mountain path. The rushing water that calls to me as I sleep, bubbling and chasing and calling and roaring as you chase away my fears, wrapping me in that warm comforting cocoon.

You are my love, my heart and my soul. You are the light in my darkness, the peace in my rage. You are my everything when I feel nothing.

And, without you I am lost. Without you, I am alone. Without you, I am empty.

Without you, I have lost the serenity of the moments that we have shared together.

Without you, I have lost the tenderness of your caress as you wash over my feet, my hands, my body.

Without you, I fear that I am nothing.

My love for you is endless. My soul yearns for you, how it cries out for you during those times when I cannot hear you, or be near you. How it urges me to listen for the sounds of your rushing, crashing, babbling tones and how my soul seems destined to starve off sleep when you are not around.

I love you, my peace, my tranquility, my muse, my passion and my life’s blood. I love you, and you alone who makes me crave and want and desire you.

And yet it is not enough. Three words, three meaningless words that fall off my lips whenever I am close to you, whenever I feel you, whenever I hear you … they are not enough.

They are not enough when I long for the sense of the cold flecks of the cascades as they come crashing down. They are not enough when I long to feel you fill my heart, my soul and to fill me with a tranquility that I long for.

I love you, my river and I count the days and hours and minutes and seconds until we are, once again together.

Clara