“
But I know how much you love it when I write about you,” he teases, squeezing my fingers. “So this is my heart given to you in the words I wrote.” His smile fades until his mouth rests in a sober line. “My heart given to you completely,” he adds so softy, I’m not sure the congregation hears before he launches into what he has prepared. “It’s called ‘Still.’” You ask me today if I love you, if I take you as my own to have and to hold, and my heart replies yes. Always, evermore, even after. Still. Not just today before a crowd, but when we are alone, you and I, through years, through pain, My heart will answer again and again, still. Ask me in a million seconds, ask me in a billion years, Do you love me? And I will say still. Ask me when we toil, when we rest, when we fuss and fight. With the taste of anger burning my lips, I will say still. Ask me when your belly is full like the moon, and our love has stretched your body with my child, leaving your skin, once flawless, now silvered, traced, scarred, I will worship you. My eyes will never stray. My heart will never wander, gladly leashed to you all my days. I am fixed on you. Our love is a great river, the Amazon, the Nile, the river Euphrates, and my heart is a violent churning in my chest, swimming upstream, defying every odd, accepting any dare To reach you. To rush you, to hold you, to keep you. You ask me if I love you? God, yes. My lover, you are the single star in a universe void before you came. And when the years have passed, and we have watched a thousand sunsets, and we are bent, our bodies crooked with age ask me again. In the twilight, in the shadow of the life we have shared, ask me if I love you, and my heart will answer before my lips can part. My love, my life, my heart never left your hands. Always, evermore, even after. Still.
”
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