A Love Letter To Sweetie

Many years ago I met a brilliant, funny, intriguing grad student. He wasn't like other men I'd met. He liked to talk about art, film, and literature with me, subjects which I knew next to nothing about, but which he enthusiastically taught me. He cooked for me, we went for long walks together, and stayed up late talking and talking. One October night after a particularly hard day, he searched all over Chicago to find me daffodils and dutch iris, my very favorites. He was so concerned with making me happy, that I actually started to be again.

But there was a part of me that was still unhappy, and that part would leave the rest of me and race around the cosmos, frantically searching for something it didn't understand or recognize. And he took care of the rest of me during these voyages until that part came back for a moment or two. I knew he loved me, because he showed me every day, but I still wasn't sure if I was ready.

Then one night he read a poem to me, and it changed everything.

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

--W. B. Yeats

I knew that he understood me, and that if I wasn't careful I would lose out on the opportunity to share a life with this wonderful man.

So I fell in love with him, and my pilgrim soul came home to rest.