Letter to an Unseen Love

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary. In honor of that, I thought I would post this poem, written in the year before our marriage, when he was just another aquaintance. It is a poem about why I stayed single, why I waited and hoped and prayed for a man that God would clearly show to me, rather than compromising and just "dating around." I put all of my girlish longings into it, never knowing that my husband was, in fact, literally "next year."


You are the strut in my step.
You are my fingers in my hair.
You are the secret smile through talk of romance,
and the waiting out of quiet frenzies.
You kiss me in the car, in the kitchen, and in my bed.

You are the dream of my silence,
the taste of my desire.
It is you who compel my beauty,
my hope of being woman.
I have always dressed for you, painted my lips
and bejeweled my ankles for you: there is no other.
When laughing at eyes, I am thinking of you.

You are girlish plans, adolescent sighs,
and a woman’s longing.
You have ever been real to me.
However unseen your face,
your presence shadows my eyes,
and though I never see you,
I will always remember.

You, my love, seal my purity,
and our coming promise binds me now.
If not, then the dream of you binds me.
You are half my dances,
and all my love songs sung so throatily in the shower.
You are more than I could have guessed.
If I am always looking over my shoulder for you,
it is because I see your silhouette before me,
and feel your breath.

I have never had a lover, only a husband,
and if you are not, then I am no less married.
You are the strut, and the preen, and the smile.
You are Christ, you are prayers,
you are long anticipated,
but here made real by hope.

You are now, not only next year.