FOR MY LOVE ON CHRISTMAS

To have loved you in the long days of summer felt like how I would imagine awakening the dancing light of the solstice. Then as the days of July became days of August and then in turn becoming September when the days began to sleep longer - still the skies would paint themselves in sherbet golds. This love, covered in gold. I wrapped myself in the warmth of what it was becoming as the trees mirrored the light of the horizon. In the mornings of autumn as the gentle light of the sun rising poured in through the east facing windows, I had settled myself next to you. Mornings were mine as you’d stay asleep despite the habitual sounds of a waking home. The boiling of a kettle, the making of breakfast, the affirmations made to a good boy Max. It would often only be the grinding of coffee beans that could stir you. I knew this as our ritual. The puttering, the stirring and then just before the waking, I’d turn my back to the kitchen to look at you, just for a moment, to see you still and asleep and I could be filled by just a second of this moment with the deepest of gratitude to be able to be called yours. The longer I stood in these moments, the more my love for you rooted itself. Octobers will always remind me of a love held so close and dear that I couldn’t have helped myself sitting across a candle lit table as I reminisced on these moments with you. “I love you” tasted sweeter spoken to you as it was no longer mine to keep but rather now something to be shared. In the months begetting winter, I learned our love to be perennial. It bloomed and blossomed despite the days shortening to hours and the hours shortening to time we knew was finite. In all this time yet in no time at all, we had made a season for ourselves. A season of good wine and good food. A season of laughter and humor and silliness. A season of learning and growing. A season of coming home to you.

To my golden colour.

To my perennial.

To my dearest moment.

To my favorite season.

It has been life’s greatest pleasure to have had the opportunity to know you. In your kindness and gentleness, you have offered me a home, a place to be safe and affirmed. Your empathy is a gift and to have been given it in the hardest months of ones lifetime is a gift I could only express with the deepest of gratitude. With a spirit of ambition and perseverance, it has been an honor to lay witness to how you’ve navigated through this life that has been dealt to you with intention. You are a man of humility, a man of integrity, a man of honesty. A man of your own.

Thank you for the moments worth sleeping in late for. Thank you for kissing me one last time before the elevator door opens. Thank you for the good morning, mornings. Thank you for attempts to cook rice. Thank you for the cups of coffee in bed or over breakfast or at the corner shop. Thank you for holding and hugging me in moments of happiness and in moments of sadness. And thank you most for this season.