Blessings

Let me tell you a story.

I came across two best friends in fiction,
and oh, how I recognized what they had:
that ease which spoke of years-long knowing,
as clear as the connection
invisible in the air between them.

I look at them and recognize us.
And I marvel at how thirteen years of knowing and root-weaving
look on the surface.
But, like an iceberg,
that which is above the water is merely the tip.

The bridge we have built spans thirteen years.
It is more than words can contain.
But I will try.

This is how the story begins—
it started tentatively:
a mosaic bridge of shared circumstances and interests:
school, playgrounds, soft toys;
Naruto, Animal Ark, Pokemon.

Time passes
and the materials we use to build the bridge become
abstract as air and sure as earth:
love, listening, kindness;
humor, morals, characters.

I have always known that I was loved.
This was the soil my roots took hold in.
I can only hope that I have let you live the same
because you have let me feel unconditional love
and I will never forget that.

Whether it is
that night that you held my hand over text
even though we were two continents away
because my mind and heart were racing
and I asked;
or the times you let me cough and cough and cough up bitter deaths and grief and pain;
or the many thousand everyday instances
of feeling on my behalf;
or the free and insistent way
you give me a window
into your every momentous and mundane moment.

How blessed I am
to have what I have lived and loved;
how blessed I am
to be blessed and blessing.

You give me the gift of myself;
you hold a mirror up to me,
and the reflection I see—
the shape I absorb—
the self I witness—
is
so
much
more.

I too, hold your self in my cupped hands.
The good and the bad,
the best and the worst,
the forgotten and the past;
for safekeeping,
for recordkeeping,
for caretaking,
to return to you
in the times when you have lost your way.
When your eyes are filmed over
with self-doubt and self-hate,
look through mine, instead.
I offer you your self,
shaped with kindness.

These are my blessings to you:
May you enter every age loved and un-alone;
May you forget the shape of loneliness and un-love and learn instead the shape of love;
May you know always that you have a home in me;
May you always have a back against which you can rest your naked heart and soul;
May your days be laughter-light and hope-filled and passion-full and soft as love;
May you be wandering no longer but home;
May you soft-river your way into confidence and capability;
May the future frighten you no more because it has become a bright, soft thing.

The story comes to a close,
but
we have the rest of our lives ahead of us
to spin moments and mundanity and momentousness
into a longer and richer tapestry.
This true, sure thing between us will never turn into a bitter, empty grave.

And these are my last blessings for us:
May we always be a safe harbor and a touchstone-home to each other;
May we always take joy in each other’s presence;
May the world always coalesce into sense;
May we always be able to be more;
And may we always be returned to and regifted our best selves.