Lovers. They hold a certain torch, and they light a certain fire. When they find each other, lovers who were once solitary characters along their dimly lit trails suddenly hold the very light they have sought, the very flame they may have once given up on.

In the realm of a loving man’s surety lies a darkened pool of uncertainty in which he bathes. Even the firmest ground beneath his feet has cracked at one time or another, and smaller requests than have been placed on his beloved have gone unrequited in his life. Sometimes, his heart may ask too much, and sometimes his eyes simply must adjust to the darkness.

Wishes are, for the most part, not foreign to the loving man. He wishes for a hand to hold, for a warm embrace on a chilly, desert night. He sees his life before his eyes and searches for the one who sees her life, before her eyes, searching for him. He knows her when he sees her, as he quietly goes about his business.  His mind raises its objections, his heart quiets down the chaos, and he accepts the flow as it is. To fight the cracking rock beneath his feet is insanity, but to fight for his own survival is certainly what he was built to do.

At some point, when the two lovers meet, her survival becomes his survival. Life to him means their life, her happiness becomes their happiness. He’ll cast his demons aside to help her fight her own, and he’ll shiver naked in the night, having given her his clothing to keep her warm. She will, in turn, feel his body quake, and she’ll respond with the love that lights his heart on fire, as the evening chill turns to morning sweat upon his wanting flesh.

Lovers aren’t immune to the shifting sands of a changing shoreline, or the fractured, crumbling rocks that come at them from those places just beyond their reach. Lover’s aren’t absent of fear inspired by the darkened corners of the caves they explore together, or those frightening shadows that reside in the space we call the unknown. Lovers have, however, that torch that they have found and that light that they have sparked. They hold that torch, each with one hand, united in the single purpose that makes it all a bit less dangerous. They, as two, hold a single torch that unites them, a power most glorified in the entirety of the Universe.

When the firmest ground cracks beneath them, one finds solid footing and holds the other firmly there. When the hailstones fall from up above, one shelters the other from the storm. When the darkness falls they grasp their torch as one and light the way ahead. They are an indestructible force for which there is no immovable object, an eternal spring that no drought can ever diminish.

Therein may lie the secret that lovers know. Perhaps it’s not the torch that holds the power, but the two hands that hold it. Perhaps it’s not the light that ends the darkness, but the two hearts who have lit it. Perhaps it’s not the firm ground that offers security, but the two who embrace upon it. Safety may be nothing but an illusion, but lovers know its strength when they rise in love to find it.

To her, I say, “I love you”. To the winds I ask they carry us where we belong. To the sky I say “hello” and to the fears within me I say “be prepared. I now have a torch for which there is no equal.”