I would have loved you under any sky.
When you hold me now, remember it.
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I would have loved you under a late summer sunset, when you didn’t quite recognize me as I sat next to you on the park swings, and you were heartbroken because you’d asked a girl to marry you and she’d run away. I would have listened to everything you’d say about her, how she was cleverer than you and braver than you and how before her, you hadn’t let anyone kiss you in ages.
Your eyes would have been lighter than, your face thinner, hair cropped.
We would have watched the sun settle below the horizon and the august leaves glide across the ground, and you would have scratched a line in the dirt with your shoe and asked me for a second time why a stranger cared about your troubles and why it felt like you had seen my face somewhere before.
I would have laughed and shrugged and told you that someone I love is going through the same thing. Also that the universe was full of blonde-haired, brown-eyed girls.
And you would have wondered what to do next, and if you should keep hoping, and I would have said that love is too busy to be selfish and that sometimes, “here let me give you my life, I don’t care if you give me yours” has to be enough.
Even though she wasn’t me, I would have wanted you to find her again.
-
I would have loved you under fall’s burnt orange, when the earth was shifting too gradually beneath your feet.
I would have poked fun at you as you were lying on a hill of browning grass, pretended to be an evening passer-by and asked what it was you had found in the sky above your head.
You would have complained that it was too calm, that the clouds moved too slowly, that the shift from light to dark was too languid and that there was so much out there and it was almost painful to stay in one place.
I would have wondered why you were lying so still then, if there was so much to do, and you would have said that the earth moved so fast you should be able to feel it from down here.
You would have made me sit next to you and asked me who I was and what my name was, and I would have given you words that not even I would remember in a few years time.
And I would have known that the moment was not meant for me, because the time for you to love me back was far away still, but your fingers would have brushed my hand while your eyes continued watching the sky and you rambled in those days and I would not have been able to leave, not even had I wanted to.
I might have kissed you and hated myself for it.
Your clothes would have been newer and your eyes would have been brown.
I would have loved you in your restless days.
-
I would have loved you under the snowflakes, when the world was too bitter and you had given up on love and on life.
I would have found you on a train, your hands cold and your eyes wet, and I would have sat next to you and let you rest your head against my shoulder.
You would not have known me.
You would not have known me anywhere except years and years from then.
But still I would have pressed my nose into your hair and told you stories about how things would get better because the world had never been monochromatic. Not even during winter nights.
And you would have asked the same questions you always did, and I would have answered you just as gently.
Yes, I’m a stranger. No, you don’t know me. Why am I kind to you? Because you remind me of someone I love very, very much.
Your smile would have been sad, this time.
And when the train stopped, a shrill whistle in the air, you would have stowed away the sadness in your typical fashion and invited me over for coffee or hot chocolate or mulled apple cider, and it would have been heartbreaking to say no to you. But I would have.
Because if I didn’t, I would have put too much spiced rum in the apple cider and ended up telling you how beautiful you always were and not to be lonely, not ever, and lying lengthwise on the couch with my head on your chest while a movie buzzed hazily in the backdrop.
I would have walked away crying.
-
I would have loved you under the baby blue of spring, when winter had just passed over the mountains and the air was crisp and beginnings were like butterflies everywhere.
I would have met you at an Easter party and you would have asked if you knew me from somewhere.
I would have pretended to think about it for a minute and then shaken my head no.
And then I would have asked if any of the children were yours, and you would have grinned in that wide, ten-year-old-boy way of yours and pointed to a little girl with hair just as dark as yours and eyes just as blue.
Her laugh would not sound like yours though, and I would have watched you excuse yourself without even meeting my eyes and wind your way through the giggling children and kiss someone else, someone younger and less full of the world and the gravity of stars.
And I would have smiled anyway because you were so alive.
You would tell me about these days, later. I would pretend I had never heard your stories before but I think you might have known.
You would look especially different this time, with longer hair and a less crooked smile, and the crinkles at the corners of your eyes would not have fanned out all the way yet.
But you would still walk the same, hands in your pockets and steps too long for anyone to keep up with.
-
I would have loved you under any sky.
I would have taken your hand and run with you under any set of stars and across any country, found you over and over until I wore myself thin, stretched myself out across time and space and I would have loved you in any lifetime.
Some people fall in love and some people were born caught up in sweeping epicycles and destined to meet again and again and again.
I will love you every time.
And when at last all the stars in the sky are put out, when the night watch says it is time to let go, I will defy the laws of the universe and I will love you.
You will never lose this love.
So I wrote this because I think unconditional love is one of the most beautiful, heartbreaking things out there, and also because I have this weird obsession with the idea of two people’s time streams being so tangled that they will always find each other again. Anyway, I don’t think you really start loving someone until you stop worrying about them making you happy, and start caring about them just being happy. And then, if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be, I suppose. (jm)
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