you are loved

original watercolor by Elizabeth Esther, copyright 2017

I know you feel lonely. Unseen.

Today you walked alone, down to the river.

You squatted at the river’s edge and scooped up river-worn pebbles.

You held them in the palm of your hand

rolled them about

picked one out of the group and held it up to the sky.

Did it sparkle? Were there glints of gold-dust?

Did you make a wish?

Did you wonder why life is the way it is?

Then you let the pebbles slip away

Away through your fingers

falling

falling away lonesome

back into the anonymous riverbed.

I want to brush back the hair from your face

And tell you how beautiful you are

I want you to know I would never let you slip through my fingers

I have always held you in the palm of my hand

I know you’re lonely and I’m sorry

I’ve been lonely, too.

There was this one time? When all my friends left me.

It was hard.

I knew they loved me and cared about me

But sometimes friends get scared of how much love asks

and sometimes they’re not ready for all of it.

I was different, see.

I had to go through things because love needed me to

People think love is a feeling

and it is. But that’s not all love is.

Love is greater and bigger than a feeling.

It’s so wide it stretches across the entire sky

It’s so deep that even if you swam to the bottom of the ocean it would be still deeper, deeper still.

The love I have for you is like this

There’s nothing you could do to make me love you less

There’s nothing you can do to make me love you more

I love you to infinity and for always

I loved you even before there was an always

And even if always ever ends (it won’t), I’ll still love you.

Can you hear what I’m trying to tell you?

I’m telling you that you are loved unconditionally.

Which is a big word, I understand.

But all it means is that there is nothing that can ever or will ever change my love for you, you, my precious, only you.

EE
2.10.19