❝ in the patterns of time, i love you forwards and backwards. you see, it was as if a veil was lifted, a thin wisp of a thing, and i saw that pattern i keep trying to describe: the wholeness stretching out from me, in time, space, and connection, and all the threads were so vivid and soft i could reach my hand out to touch them, to play with them like strings whose music i could feel in my muscles, as if it were through the striations of my flesh that this pattern expressed itself. it is the same thread that holds proton and neutron together in their minute dancing that makes all matter, the same dance that the planets dance in their orbit, the dance of all things around all those enigmatic centers. it is the same thing that allows my skin to contain me, allow me to stay in place on this ground, allowing me to hold who i hold, arms and legs and fingers intertwined, allowing space and time to ebb and flow, this closing of distance and connection. and what else is that but love? the threads extend from me toward those i love, and how, how can it be written? the universe is an infinite expansion and i am in the infinite expansion, and have always been, and now, i am becoming and the universe is being constantly created around me. i exist both as this infinite thing and as this being, this body that is here in finite time and space. and still, still i love. i felt my love expand from me, reaching out and becoming simply one with all that love is, just that force of the universe, and i knew the knowledge of all the ancients, of their old gods, were reflections of this little glimpse beyond the veil. maybe even then, i saw me here, by this window, in this high place, holding love in my arms and seeing them and understanding. this is what it means to hold someone close, this is what it means to say you are safe and there is nothing to be afraid of, this is how we weather all the storms, by taking all the forces of nature and finding that behind all of them is this. and perhaps, this is what they began to worship. what i mean to say is i felt my love in me, felt it in my body, my being, the i that loves, and those beings with bodies that i love. and all that i love, and the threads that hold me to them and them to me, played here, music through the striations of my muscles as they move, as i hold them, as my fingers caress theirs, and all our undulations create this force that means to say: you are safe and there is nothing to be afraid of, you can be completely who you are with me, both your body and being, and this you that is perpetually becoming, and that you that is infinitely expanding, beyond space and time and understanding. all these threads, all these parallels, they take my breath away - a signal that the temporal halted for a moment - and in that moment, all that i love and all that i am is with me. and you were there. you were nestled in the pattern with me, beside me, in me, and with all who you love. it was the first day of spring too, a day for gentle love or the chaos of love that must still grow. but it was not our day, because there is no day for this, this pattern, this point of intersection that yes, is here now in this body, in this time, where we seem to gather all these threads from between us and the infinitely expanding beyond, drawing them ever nearer, ever together, those threads that are vivd and soft, and the music we play through them - and i would drown in all of this, but somehow i do not. and then i breathe, and time flows, and i am again here and now. but all i needed was that moment. what i mean to say is that i saw love and felt it and knew it, and saw all those i love and when and why and how, and i saw you. what i mean to say is that i knew it and maybe you did too, because we have not been running from these parallels and these threads pulling us together, because i know you feel the reverberations through the undulations of our bodies, because i know you too hear the music that plays through. i think, though, that it needs to be said: what i mean to say is that i love you and i want you to remember this is what i will always mean when i say it. .❞