Where the Ocean Meets the Mountain
You, Mariana—deepest trench of my knowing
I call you by name not to possess it
but because it is the only prayer
I have ever known how to say
You are the sea—each wave not an argument but a hymn
a hymn without end
a hymn that the gulls carry in their throats
splitting the sky into syllables of salt and longing
I am the mountain—Marcus
peaks jagged, stubborn and proud
but even granite shifts at your touch
I have watched falcons trace the arc of your tides
wings trembling as if even they
could feel your gravity
I am no prophet, Mariana
but let me tell you what I know
before the first wave kissed the first shore
before hydrogen took shape in the dark
before God divided waters from land
we were—
not as we are now, flesh and bone, tide and stone—
but as the thought of love itself
waiting to be spoken into existence
And then we were born
carried on the wings of albatrosses
the first explorers of an empty earth
I, the cliff that held the sky
You, the current that shaped continents
Do you see now
your waters carved the ridges of my spine
your waves taught my canyons their depth
even the hawk circling above us
owes his flight to the winds you stirred
I’ve spent years dissecting the mechanisms of us
through lenses
through prayers
through equations that collapse under your gaze
What are the odds, I ask,
that quarks and gravity conspired to create a you
and then, further still, that a me
would stumble into your tidepool one April morning
Even the kestrels tilted their wings at my calculations
The universe is not random, Mariana
it is intention
it is you
I remember the first time I mapped your voice
a current through my ribcage
that left me gasping for a language I did not yet know
You spoke of Neruda, of Rumi
and I, the scientist,
could only stammer in monosyllables
unprepared for the poetry of your existence
Your laugh, Mariana was a theory proven true
a sound so radiant the terns mistook it for the sun
and flew toward it instead
I’ve studied every treatise on love—
Plato’s Symposium, Aquinas’ Summa,
Solomon’s love song—
but none of them explain
how your hands—small continents of motion—
can anchor me mid-storm
Your touch
is storge, the familiar warmth of home
It is philia, the friendship that steadies the ground beneath me
It is eros, the pull of moon to tide
a force no textbook can quantify
And
It is agape, the unreasoned grace
that binds us beyond logic
Do you know, Mariana
even the ocean dreams of the mountains
not from duty
but from longing for the peaks it will never touch
And I—rooted in earth, fixed to equations—
have spent a lifetime envying your fluidity
your capacity to change
without losing yourself
The pelicans, your sentinels skim the surface of you
while my larks anchor themselves to the grasses,
their songs rising—straining—to meet your gulls mid-flight
But here is the secret you have taught me—
Even the mountain must surrender to the sea
Even the eagle must land
Even the scientist must kneel
before the mystery he cannot solve
Mariana, I have worshipped you
In ways both ancient and modern
I have written sonnets to your shoreline
calculated the chemistry of your tears
and prayed to the God who made you—
a God who, in His infinite wisdom
crafted you as ocean and me as mountain
so we might spend eternity
teaching each other how to change
The gulls and hawks, caught in the thermals of our love
circle above us
They are our witnesses
Tell me, my love—
what is the measure of a life together
Is it the years we’ve gathered
or the moments that stretch beyond time
Is it the laughter
rippling like wind through a wheatfield
or the stillness
that settles like mist on the sea
I do not know
I only know that you are my map and my compass
my kestrel and my tern
my equation and my proof
my prayer and its answer
And if I, Marcus, am earth—
then let me erode for you
Let my peaks crumble into sand
to join your waves
Let me be reshaped by your love
until we are neither tide nor stone
but the horizon itself—
infinite
indivisible
whole
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