Sunflower

I came here to make you smile. There’s something about the way you smile that knocks years off my bones and turns me into a reckless teenager again — the kind that forgets composure and just stares. You really need to see it from my side. Thirteen thousand, six hundred and forty seven feels like an absurdly big number when you say it out loud, yet I still find myself grateful for every single hour I’ve been allowed to place you inside of. And somehow, in the middle of all that counting and remembering, the simplest truth keeps repeating itself without effort: I love you like a mad thing. If God is not wonderful, then nothing else deserves the title, because loving you has felt like proof that wonder still exists.

I think about you and end up asking questions that have no business needing answers. Where did you come from, honestly? How does someone just arrive and rearrange another person’s entire sense of certainty like this? My Sunflower, understand this — I love you. And if that feels understated, let me say it plainly: I. fucking. love you. Just you. Barely year ago, I crossed paths with the most beautiful being I have ever encountered, and even now that memory still carries weight. If God is not beautiful, then beauty never stood a chance against you. And I say it, quietly and loudly, like a chant I never want to outgrow — Sunflower. Again, Sunflower. Say it once more and feel it land where it belongs.

There was a time when the idea of marriage lived somewhere between fantasy and disbelief, something reserved for dreams that didn’t take me seriously. There was a time when loving this deeply felt impossible, like breathing would eventually become optional. And yet, here we are. Here I am, standing inside a reality where love presses against my chest until it reminds me I’m alive, until it leaves me smiling for no reason at all. So smile for me — not because you have to, but because the world looks softer when you do, and because I came here to make you smile, and I’ll keep coming back to do it again and again.

You are the absolute love of my life, and I love you with everything I am and everything I stand for.

Now and always, just you. Till forever ends.