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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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