Today marks four blissful years spent with the love of my life.

Four years during which, as a result of his precise cultivation, I have blossomed more fully into the woman I was meant to become.

And each year is even better than the last, just as each day brings us giggles of joy and tender moments of intimacy: an embrace in the kitchen while we wait for a meal to heat up, a kiss on the neck when one of us visits the other from where we work at opposite ends of our home, an evening nuzzle as we gaze over the sparkling lights of downtown from our bedroom.

I'm always talking about how important it is for two halves of a relationship to be whole. The truth? David is my everything, and I don't like to ponder what my life would be like had we never joined paths, four years ago today.

My favorite poem is The Rhodora, by Emerson. I've posted it here before, somewhere among these entries that cover highlights from almost 6 years of my life. I fell in love with this poem because of the way Emerson depicts beauty and chance, and because when I first came across it, it made me believe that I had a chance for beauty, and for love, no matter how deeply hidden I may be.

Here it is, I type the poem now in honor of my love, the man who, by chance or intention (a question for the ages), invaded my life, and made it simply wonderful.

The Rhodora: On being asked, Whence is the flower?

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods.
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come, his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

-Barbarella

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