Tenderly I open pages aged delicate. More than words, more than poems, songs of two hearts overflowing... the love of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning spilling out in ink. She wanted so wholly to please that for so very long she could not even bear to show him those of these that were hers, lest they not fully express the soul music she longed to sing into his as if a bow across heartstrings.
Among the leaves of print I find a note card... adorned with roses stained by time. Flowing script speaks of the sale of an estate. Between the lines I read love. Time is but air. We must breathe it in, drink it in, feed it to our hearts, drawing it into our deepest core... or it is gone. It does not come again. It doesn't linger by the path as we hesitate. It is simply for that moment. Followed by another... and another. Until a river of months and years and lifetimes have been swept in its current.
Now is now. Now is the moment to listen rather than hear, to hold rather than loose, to gaze rather than glance, to love rather than feign... neither deflect.
