The Bruises Prove It's Real

Things that are worth something are never easy. The bruises on my shins, on my knees, and on my elbows prove that it's real, that it means something to me. The frustrations, the smiles, the long goodbyes, they mean everything. This means everything. You mean everything to me, and I have come to live for seeing your smile. I have come to live for seeing the blue of your eyes, and to touch the soft curves of your face. I have come to live for your happiness because it is all I ever want to see. I have lived for so many things. I have said that I live to see the sunset, the sunrise, the pale moon over the ever shifting waters of the ocean. All of these things fill me with reason, with purpose, with a need to be and to belong. Yet nothing compares to your eyes. Nothing can hold me in its embrace like you do. Even the ocean beneath the sunshine, even the sands of a beach, or the limbs of a tree in the summer, even all these things would lose some shade of meaning if I were to see you heartbroken as I have been. All of these things would lose their vibrant, their charm, were I to know that you were ever hurt by me or something that I had done. 

I want to give you the sunset we watched that night before I left. I want to capture it and give it to you in its purest form so that you might always remember me when you saw it. I see the stars and I think of you. I can only hope that somewhere you are thinking of me too. I could never knowingly hurt you. If I ever did, that might be the end of me. I would have betrayed everything that I understood, everything that I would have thought to be true up until that point. I can not betray my own heart. That is one thing that I have never thought I would be able to do, and if I were to do so by ever hurting you... The world would seem a far darker place than I had ever imagined it.