another sort of love

friend, you are loved. this is nothing new; you’ve had all of our love

for a long, long time. since we spent all our time riding horses
and drinking slurpees in the car, sneaking into bars and waiting around
for something that would resemble a real life. and then we all just became
grown-ups, or something like that. do you remember when?

i remember being right in front of the stage at a pub in a mountain town,
drinking beers and dancing and taking too many aerial self-photos, all crooked
and missing the edges, a crowd at the periphery we won’t remember.
do you remember how you told me then, yelling above the clamour,
that you loved him? a first admittance, the first step towards the best realization:
that you could be with this other person forever.

you and i have come so far from where we began:
from teenage silliness and the biggest heartache either one of us as ever known,
from drinking coffee and doing the crossword and holding hands during the eulogy,
from always knowing that we would love each other no matter what,
to learning something new: that there is another sort of love altogether.

this other sort of love, it comes with a big promise, the brightness of a future
you can rely on, a circle unbroken as the ring on your left hand.
this is the sort of love that you’ve been preparing for without even knowing it.
and you have your whole life to grow in it.