To My Future Spouse

My sweet man,

I want to live life alongside you.

I want to have pillow fights and build pillow forts in our tiny apartment which we can barely afford. In a city I do not yet know. Nor do I care. I want to do dishes after cooking you a large dinner and have you slide your arms around me. I would like to hold onto your hands when you get out of bed to leave to work in the mornings and beg you to crawl back in. I want you to love me when I first wake up in the morning with drool on my lips and my hair matted to one side. To love me with really bad breath. And I will do the same for you.

I want to kiss you in the winter cold. Sit close. Touch you softly and lean in. Hoping you will get the hint and kiss me first. Feel your big pouty lips pressed against mine where nothing in the world can touch us. I want to run my fingers through your hair and hold you to me. I want you to question why I do the weird things I do or say the weird things I say and love me for it. I want to travel with you. Laugh and scream and adventure. See new cultures and eat new food. Even if it gives you food poisoning and I have to stay by your side caressing your hair and feeding you crackers. I want to lie on your lap and have you play with my hair. I want to watch stupid movies with you and hate the other’s choices.… I want a life together.

I want to go to work every day and daydream about coming home to you. I want to sleep endless nights with you curled against my back, and if you were to whine like an abandoned puppy in your dreams I would lay my hands upon your back and rub until the nightmares go away, and in the morning I will tell you about it and you’ll fall in love with me just a tiny bit more. I want your stupid flirty self, to go to the library with, or a ball game, or a bar for a drink. I want you to read from the Bible to me before bed, and then switch to Harry Potter or Jack Keroac before I drift off into dreams. Dreams where I do not have to picture us holding hands because I’ll know it is reality and the reality is better. I need you to know that if you were to fall in love with someone who is not me, my heart would break but I’d want yours to continue on. I want your happiness, even if it is separate from mine. There’s a piece of a poem that says I would like to stand in your heart and tell you I am not afraid of your dark. I’m not afraid darling. Though I don’t know what fears you have or what doubts or secrets, I am not afraid of them. I love you. Simply for who you are.

I want to fight and argue about stupid things but then apologize and resolve it. I want to communicate when we’re angry and not let it build into something we can’t fix. One day I do want marriage. I want us, willing to commit our lives to this thing we’ve got going on. I will walk down the aisle towards you knowing I couldn’t have made a better decision in a partner. For that is what I want us to be. Partners. Against the world, bank loans, and petty people. I want kids with you. There I said it. I want a little girl and boy...with your eyes and your face and maybe my skin tone. I’d like you to laughter to bubble out of your soul as you swing them around and teach them all about life and how sometimes it is harder than it looks. I’d like you to bawl your eyes out when our little girl has her first date because you know you’re losing her. Then you’d take my hand in yours and look in my eyes and we’d nod and agree it is for the best. We can’t keep her forever. We will visit one another’s families and agree that both are crazy but love that about them. You will have long talks and drinks with my father and he will approve of you as the only man worth giving me away to. I will sit and knit with your mother, drink coffee and giggle while looking at pictures of you naked in the yard.

I know that you do not feel this now. I also know that I am currently a stranger to you but I cannot stand for you not to be in my life. I know that it is fantasy. I know that currently I am alone and you… maybe you’re with someone, maybe you’re not.

One day though we can keep each other and though it may be hard at times, and I’m certain we’ll fight, it will be worth it in every sense of the word.

Love is a soul’s recognition in another and my soul has seen yours.