I kissed her hands the way you’d pray to God – gently, in awe of the presence in front of you. A benediction more than a gesture, the way you touch something holy but never dare to claim it. Maybe she was my God, and with the way her eyes glimmered in the early morning sun, I would believe it in a second. 

Oh! She kisses me with her eyes. 

She doesn’t even need to kiss me with her lips, as much as I crave them like a dying man craves just another second of life to savor. What is a kiss if not the knowing between two mouths that words can’t hold all the feeling? Sustained, trembling, knowing that you see me as I see you, and you love me for it anyway. 

She kisses me with her eyes, just her eyes, and it is enough for me.

I could not believe it when the day before, I had swallowed my heart in my throat as the words tumbled out of me, contorted. I love you. I love you. Please wait for me. Please don’t marry another man, not when I stand at your altar each night, whisper my prayer like the sweetest nothings.

And she had said yes! Yes! Not in so many words, but in the quiet that followed. She did not laugh, nor look away; she let my confession rest between us like a fragile bird, and then, with a voice softer than a hymn, she gave me her answer. I was still the song in her heart, the one I had been singing most ardently from halfway around the world, hoping she could hear.

No trumpets sounded. No choirs sang. Only her breath and mine in the still air, and yet the world shifted, tilting toward something infinite.

Hours from that holy moment, standing on the edge of parting. I could take her mouth with mine and brand the memory into something burning, but what would it change? Time would still open its chasm between us. So instead, I press my lips to her forehead – once, twice – an offering, a vow, a seal upon the altar of her skin.

Her hands are warm in mine. I kiss them like scripture. I want to carve her name into the marrow of my bones. And still, still – she gives me more. She lifts her eyes to mine, and oh, the way they hold me, steady as a cathedral, wide as the sky.

She kisses me with her eyes.

In her gaze, I live a lifetime.