Originally written on August 8, 2016.

There is a woman. A strong, beautiful woman who knows so many things.

She knows the passion of her heart. She offers it in her words and shares it in her eyes. She stands tall against the tide of time, softly protesting the sincerity of her truth while gently holding onto the sanctity of her innocence. What a marvel she is, a candle held against the new-moon sky, a note written on a sheet of paper that completes a maestro’s symphony.

She knows the strength of her weathered mind. No force of nature bends her knee, no ill-intentioned heart corrupts her sweet intentions.  She’s ridden the mighty waves of the past, and has yet to surrender to the shore. A humbled man cannot know such things as she, he can only try fathom this wonder that stands before him.

Yet, for all the things she knows, there are many things she doesn’t.

She doesn’t know I sit in wondrous silence, basking in her light. She doesn’t know I see her nestled perfectly on a distant horizon, rising gently with the songbirds, reminding so many a new day has dawned. She doesn’t know that I exist, for I am but a star on the other side of her own rising sun, unseen in the light, anonymous in the blue-and-orange hued morning sky.

She’ll doesn’t know how the wonders of the world are lost to me when she stands before them. She doesn’t know how all else is forgotten when she smiles, and how I’ll never be able to explain the reasons why.

She doesn’t know how hard it is for me to catch a breath when she shares herself, or how I force myself to forget her in the placeholders that I find. She doesn’t know so many things, but I know one. She exists. That hope, that wonderful feeling discovered in what seems like an insane notion of my mind, may be the only gift she ever gives me.

A gift she has no idea she’s given. A light she has no idea she’s shared. These things she may never know, but she doesn’t have to. Sometimes that is just the way things are meant to be.