The Vow

A passage in songs of Solomon reads: I found him whom my soul loves. I held him and would not let him go.

Remember how I arrived to the scene — strayed, untethered, lost? Damaged, fractured, in fragments? How you sacrificed your wholeness to fill my voids? How, in my brokenness you sought all my bits, my parts, my rifts, my gaps, and assembled me whole?

I remember.

I remember how you drew out a map and marked all the pathways to love. How you settled me into all its languages, unfolding and demystifying this unfamiliar concept, showing me all the possibilities that loving holds, incubating me till I was ready to claim it as my own.

I remember you staying. Loving me. Especially when I was undeserving of it. You; sharing in my pain, nurturing my wounded spirit. You; wrapping me in compassion, in safety, in care. You; acknowledging me in all the ways I had gone unseen, unaddressed, undesired.

You cherished, you valued, you treasured me. You left room for my fragility and all my flaws. You marinated me in warmth and tenderness and affection. You became a soft landing. A source of steady, sustained comfort for all my grief, and rejection, and the many harms inflicted upon me.

Shall I bring up the words?

I remember the words. Those words. I loved how they easily rolled off your tongue.

Many days I felt I needed to hear you say them, days I needed convincing, days I asked, sometimes more than once, and you consented.

It was the way you said them, with boldness and vulnerability, your voice constricting and still, they rolled easily.

“I love you.”

Those words echoed in my mind, wove themselves around my heart, and wrapped themselves around my spirit like tendrils to a tree.

Those words still hold us. Return us back to what we envisioned our love to be. What we have made of it. And what we imagine beyond it.

Those words will always linger, leaving us permanently tethered to one another, all because you dared keep your vow to love me — and I trust that you will to our last day.