I will love you as you are, for as long as we stay together.

I will love your crooked smile and the way you sing in the shower.

I will enjoy our morning walk and the way you hold my hand.

For as long as we’re together, I will appreciate you for everything that first made me fall in love with you.

I won’t pick apart your habits. I won’t focus on what we don’t have. I will love you as you are, because you are a gift that I get to open every day.

When we met you were not perfect, and honestly, neither was I. But that didn’t really matter because what we did have was enough.

We had the pleasure of discovery, and I want to keep discovering the treasures of your soul. I once saw you in an uncomplicated, unfettered way, tomorrow overshadowed by the exquisite passion that took over our everyday.

Somewhere along the way, I forgot to see your brilliance, I no longer swam in the deepest part of you.

But it was I who had become shallow, finding fault when you had never promised to be anyone but who you were.

I’ve made choices to be dissatisfied; I’ve allowed doubt to creep in.

But what is wrong with this moment, with the tender you way you hold me, with the hopeful love in your eyes?

We may not make forever, we may not birth any children, we may not even last the year…

But today you are warm in my arms and you offer your heart without regret.

Remember the way you used to tell me stories, silly jokes that made my day?

I so miss those early days, our easy friendship, waiting breathlessly for your call.

In hoping for more than you have to give me, I have lost sight of the miracle of your love. I looked too far in the future and decided that you could not take me there. I looked so far that I lost all vision of what is right before my eyes.

Thank you for your boyish ways, the ones that balance my seriousness.

Thank you for the way you make love to me.

I love the man who takes charge of my body then holds me close all night long.

Thank you for your faithfulness, for telling me that I am beautiful in your eyes.

Thank you for bleeding your love and not hiding how you feel.

Perhaps tomorrow life will send us along different paths, perhaps tomorrow we will no longer fit, but today I choose to enjoy every second that we have.

Today you are enough.

Today you are the one who is the caretaker of my heart.

Today I will love you as you are, and am grateful that you love me without asking me to change.

You don’t need to grow up for me, if you change do it for yourself. I will also follow the course that I am taking, be it slow or be it fast.

There is beauty in our awakening, in the way our spirits unfold, all is perfect in its timing; let me love you as you are.

Let me kiss your chest and hear the poetic echo of your heart. Surely, there is nothing more exquisite than the sound of your life. Surely, your lips upon my neck still thrill me like first time…like the last time will.

Let us not think of tomorrow, let us love like blazing stars. Today, I will love you exactly as you are.

Let us not make any promises that we can’t keep. What would be the point of that?

With what is best in me, I love you…for as long as we have.

Author: Monika Carless

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: bholl7510 at Flickr