Do I Love Him?

I catch myself day dreaming often. My mind twirling about in fanciful scenarios. Mental screen plays triggered by a simple action or phrase that reminds me of him in the smallest of ways, a message or phone call with him.

The phantom echos of his voice or his words haunting my memories, whirling about in my heart. Casting distant, dreamy smiles to my face, the tight restraints on my heart ease, the pain subsides for a few blissful moments, even hours. Just from a single thought. Of him. Just him. His voice and his words.

I love him. I do. But why? How? Can one really love someone because of their words or their voice? Because of phone calls and text messages? Can one really love someone so much as I think I do him without ever really being near him? Seeing him beyond that of the three pictures I had managed to obtain in the years of our fluctuating relationship.

Yet, to stand before him, to look up into the dark seriousness of his brown eyes and feel what is truly there without the need of words. Even then. Would that be enough? Would that some how be the completing formula to a complicated equation?

Or is it knowing that, he, a man of little words, truly means the ones he does say. Knowing that those words would have never been typed or spoken if it was not something he wanted to say or something that he truly meant.

Or is it knowing that, though few pictures I may have of this tall, sturdily cut and solidly built, dark and mysteriously dangerous beast of a man, I have more than others. A man who so hates to be photographed trusts me enough to tap the send button, he himself knowing well that I would hold on to the snap shots of his life for as long as my life carried on.

Or is it knowing that three years of patience, obtaining trust, peace and longing, calm and panic all twisted into neat yet somewhat complex braided strands that allows me to be closer to him in the hardest way to ever be close to another. Emotionally...

Or, is it I love him because he is allowing me to love him...

I love his voice, not only for the deep steady rumble of it, but because he feels enough comfort in me to allow me to hear it. I love his laughter because I am the source of the carefree outburst. I love his words because he speaks them in such a way that is not only charming and in ways Victorian, but simply forthright and intelligent ...

So, DO I love him 1200 miles apart?

So, DO I love him for his words and shared phone calls?

So, DO I love him? Or do I love the idea of him?

Yes.

I do.

1200 miles apart, an emotional risk, a phone call. A pounding heart, a laugh. Time and a connection many do not get to feel at all. The ideas, that of realism. Ideas based on what I already know and know well. My heart simply afraid of it all one day... Suddenly going away... Disappearing as if just a whimsical dream or liberation of a haunted and broken heart.

So many would demand so much more of what was already so much that has been given. What I have received is a treasure cove of something so much more valuable and precious than silver and gold by the pound, or jewels and priceless art by the bundle. Given by the fiercest of dragons in trust fore I earned it and I take pride in it.

Forever will this man hold my heart. Whether he is to ever be mine again or not, my only wish is that he prospers, that I am allowed to stay by his side in anyway he may desire or need, that I continue to hold that place in his heart, his life that many never see nor cared to stay long enough to see.

I love him, yes.

Although, somehow, what I feel is more than just simply love.

Somehow there is something more to the love and affection that swells in my chest when I think of his name, when the memories dance back to mind. Some how having a place in his heart that he had closed off so carefully is reward enough. To be the source of his smile, or the reason he feels love at all is priceless. Sharing in even the smallest parts of his life is a enjoy and triumph to my heart.

A message.

A phone call.

A Laugh.