Before I go on, I need to make something very clear: I love her. Deeply. I could list infinitudes of clichés about the ways in which she makes me feel – that she’s the missing puzzle piece I’ve longed for all my life, she made my life go from black and white to technicolor, that I’d give up my soul just for a whiff of her scent – but I fear none of them can adequately explain the intensity of my passion. How can I explain an orchestral symphony to the deaf? How can I explain sunsets to the blind? 

How can I explain the depth of my love to anyone? 

Alas, I must try. When I tell you that I love her, I mean to tell you that it feels like my entire life was a long process of approaching the great singularity of our meeting, and that all things have been secondary to that one extraordinary moment. I mean to tell you that our hearts are plainly connected by a golden thread, the only source of direction to be found in the labyrinth of the universe. I mean to tell you that she is the end of the labyrinth. I mean to tell you that our spirits were cut from the very same cloth, that our love feels like deep kinship, like a grand homecoming. I mean to tell you that the glory of our union is like the feeling of graduating after many long, grueling years of study, like throwing your cap in the air in sweet triumph. I mean to tell you that it is like a physicist toiling at his desk for many years, his entire life’s work culminating in one grand moment of at last reconciling all variables into one Grand Unified Theory of Everything. I mean to tell you that she is my Grand Unified Theory of Everything, that she is my Everything, and my life had not started until our relationship began.

I didn’t know I was homesick until you held me. I didn’t know I was addicted to you until I had my very first fix. I didn’t know I was freezing until I knew your warmth. 

What wasted years! My hands had never done anything worthwhile until they held yours. My eyes had never truly seen until they drank in your bare form. I didn’t know I had a voice until you heard me. I was virgin until you deflowered my heart. 

Life before her was not life at all, but a prelude to it, an agonizingly long gestation period where miscarriage was threatened numerous times. The glory of our consummated union was like at last being born and taking my first breath. 

…

I can say, “I love you,”

or I can tell you:

you are my means

and my end.

you are my how, 

and my why.