Love does not speak of time, does not whisper out of the minutes that pass between lips finding lips, cannot tell tales of the years that wash away while two hearts wait to beat together in the empty hours of a night. It does not, it cannot, for love does not understand.
Love knows not of time.
I sat on the windowsill of that hotel for hours, I watched a morning dissolve into an afternoon, clouds billow then burst, rain spread and cut through fog, through mist that rose off the River Sligachan. I sat and tried to fill my lungs with the air that separated she from me, she that I knew was just a floor above me, she that was braiding her hair and stepping into a dress I’d not yet seen. She that was looking at the same river, the same Black Cuillins that rose from the bog and glen like giants that slumber in a land that can still keep them secret.
I felt my hands shake, fingers still tired from ripping fabric and winding it around wooden handles, from tying it in knots, from the dipping of two dozen torches hand-made into paraffin for the burning. Shake, I told them, she’ll hold them soon.
Love knows not of soon, love knows not of time.
We can forget our feet you know, forget they work to walk, that the walking can carry us where we know we need to go. We see them, dangling below the windowsills we sit upon, but we forget their purpose. I stood and felt the hollowness below my ankles, felt the emptiness that comes when all you are is waiting to be all you will be, all that waits just beyond the hours you’ll endure quietly impatient. Steady, I told them, steady on.
I walked across the gravel and heard the din of those that love me. A murmur, really, a Charlie Brown’s teacher as muted trumpet around me, as I knew nothing of the words they spoke. Hands on the Harris tweed of my jacket, squeezes upon my shoulder blade to stop the tears in their eyes I imagine. Some knew the weight of all that waiting, some knew the toll that ache can take. I remember the brightness, the burst of sunlight through the pillow clouds that decorated a Scottish sky that only knows to change. I remember the sound behind the voices, the tuning up of bagpipes from behind the hotel, the drone that filled the glen like a forlorn wail for we chose a lament and not a march, not a jig of celebration. A funeral song, we asked for, and called this day the burial of all we once were.
Love knows not of once weres, love knows not of time.
I found my feet, or they me, and they carried me to the center of that bridge. Stone span that has stood over two centuries, dark arches over enchanted waters that promise beauty eternal to those that brave them and dip their faces. I stood and faced the Red Cuillin, whispered my fears to Glamaig and asked her to be not greedy with her comfort. Nothing was the sound around me for minutes and minutes, not the rushing water below my feet, not the song of birds that only sing on that Isle, not the thumping of my own heart. Nothing until footsteps soft and steady, leather boots on pebble and sand, the gait I call a familiar thing.
There’s a catch in a throat before tears rise to the surfaces of our eyes, and if you know it, you know it to be audible. This is how I knew she was near, this was the brief melody to the rhythm of her walking.
Green. A tornado of a hurricane of a maelstrom of emerald lace and it was carried around me as though she alone controlled the winds. Everything was green and sun-stained and saturated through the blur of teary eyes and a heart swollen after so many years of beating alone.
She, the center of the universe, the green that controlled my gravity. She, the whirlwind of jade and dark hair laced with silver and shine. She the force that stopped the shaking in my tired hands, the heartbeat that raced in time with mine, the drumbeats to the bagpipes that spread across the land like a blanket. She, the end of staring at the hour hand, the minute hand, the silencing of the ticking of a clock that I never had to listen to again.
Five years and a day ago I stood and waited, I called out hopes into the misty air, to the mountains that surrounded us like sentinels, like guardians of our graceful merge. Five years and a day ago I turned to face the explosion of color that was you, I sobbed into the side of your neck and felt the weight fall away that I’d carried so long, so far, so often alone.
Five years and a day ago we stood and listened to the song that filled the glen, we tied our hands together, we spoke promises into the wall of rain that split and danced around us. Five years and a day ago we held torches into the blue night sky and screamed ferociously, casting out the demons of such damned separation.
Five years and a day ago we found each other on the other side of a sea and stood in a half circle of those we cherish and became one thing, though I think we always were.
Love knows nothing of five years, nothing of a day ago, for I say it now to you:
Love knows not of time.
Happy Anniversary my only love. Thank you, for loving me.
Five years like a blink,
half decade like a lifetime.
Love knows not of time.
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