I miss you. I think I always have. Even when I didn’t know who you were, I missed you. And now that I know you, now that I have known your radiance and your love, how can I not miss you? How can I not miss the love that once was mine?

… was it mine? Was that brilliant heart of yours ever truly mine to cherish and adore?

And if the answer is ‘No’ … may I cherish you anyways? May I adore you, send you my fondest thoughts and prayers? If you do not want them, I will understand. But they will be yours, regardless.

My heart tries to move forward, to move on, to find someone to fill the shape of you. But there is no one quite like you; there never has been, and there never shall be. Yet my confused heart still tries, even as it cries out for you.

You, who are not mine.

But I am yours. I have been before, and, I think, I always will be, in one way or another (even if I never am in the way I want to be). Before anyone and anything else, I was – and am – yours.

And yet, our lives have only brushed peripherally – how is it, then, that I should love you so? That I should miss the person I have never held, the person I have never kissed?

The person I have only dreamed of. The person I have longed for.

Even that peripheral brush was enough to send my heart tumbling into a tempest, to knock my world into a tizzy and set my soul to its course. Even that peripheral brush was enough for me to love you.

I only hope it was enough for you to remember me. I don’t think I could forget you, even if I wanted to. And yes, I have wanted to forget. To forget the possibility we created, to forget the red threads we might have woven, to forget the lingering ghost of wanting your hand in mine, of wishing to just have you next to me.

But Time stood between us then, as it does now. Then, we had Youth on our side, yet now… even Youth must give in Time. Never love, though, and so I shall never forget you, or the way you made me thrill to know that, even briefly, even incompletely, you were mine.

How can I forget the dream that made me live? The dream that sparked my mind, that sent my heart spilling forth onto pages and pages, and still sets that same heart to singing?

Had we defeated Time, I would have wished to marry you. Sometimes… sometimes I still wish. But that is all it ever is. Wishing. And not every wish comes true, I know. But it seems that I can’t stop wishing, even knowing this fact.

I could quote the poets, the playwrights, the authors and philosophers, all in detail of my feelings for you, but they would too little. And all the same, they would be too much. For you are not mine that I could feel for you in this way, but once you were – once, once I did feel for you with all the contrariness of hot ice and a midnight sun (and sometimes my soul is still seized with the tight grip of a yearning heart). But though you are not mine, I can still feel the whispers of stars inside my bones, the resonance of my heart in the shadow you left behind. There is still the shiver of hot ice under my skin, and the midnight sunshine warms my heart.

I should let you go. Why can’t I move past you? Why don’t I want to? In truth, the very last thing I want is to move farther away from you – I would rather cross deserts and jungles to find you, sail or swim the oceans to see you.

I love you. But I can’t tell you this, I must not tell you this. You are not mine, that I could be allowed to say such a thing to you. But I do. I love you.

I miss you.

I want to be able to sing my song the way I think it should be sung, not the way that sounds most pleasing to some other person. I want people to hear it and like it, or even dislike it. I want them to hear me and think, How happy she sounds! I want them to hear me and sing their own songs.

I want to create a cacophonous chorus, my song and yours and his song and hers, yours ours mine theirs all of us together, singing our own songs. We’ll all be amazed at how our songs meld together and harmonize, how one melody weaves with another to create an entirely new song that only we can sing.

I want to be able to live my life like this, like the bird sings. The bird sings because she can do nothing else—I want to live because to do otherwise would be to die, and I am not interested in dying. I can do nothing other than live—I must sing.

But what I want to really be?

I want to be a wife. I want to be a mother. You have no idea how badly I want to be a wife and mother. Possibly even a stay-at-home mom (though that would kind of kill the teacher idea).

I want to be someone’s partner. And I don’t have pretty, flowery, eloquent words for this, I just have a want. Hell, it might even be a ‘calling’ of sorts, being a wife and mother.

I don’t want to be a wife and mother to the exclusion of being a teacher; I’m greedy enough to ‘want it all.’ A husband, a family, and a job that lets me be with them. I want a man I love, children I’ll love, and a job I’ll have so much fun with it should be illegal (except not really, because that would be so stupid and terrible).

I want to be able to come home to someone (or several someones), and say, “Hi, love. How was your day?” I want to be able to give good night kisses, to tuck people into bed (even when they get too old for that; You’re embarrassing me, Mom! Ewww!). I want to share meals and movies and memories, to do things together and have fun (and to be sad, and angry, and all the things involved in being in healthy human relationships).

I want a hand to hold. Forever, if possible. For as long as I can, if forever’s not possible. I want to go to say Good night, I love you and wake up next to the man I said it to, every day.

I don’t want to be a wife or mother because of some ingrained societal drive/compulsion. I want to be a wife. I want to be a mother. Just me. I want to be a teacher because I know I can do it well, because I have a passion for it and because it fills a void in me I didn’t know I had — just the same as wanting to be a wife and a mother tugs at a lonely, empty place inside of me that is waiting to be filled with the matching pieces of my husband and children. I want to be a wife because there is a place inside my heart that cries out for another to join with, because there is a place within my soul that still searches for that last, final piece of love. I want to be a mother because my arms ache to hold my children, be they mine by birth or by adoption, I don’t care, because they are my children. I want to be a mother because there is a place in me that longs to stand, someday, in a crowd with tears in my eyes, watching as my children become wonderful, wonderful people who make me so proud.

I want to be a wife, a mother, a teacher simply because the words soundsright to me, simply because the words and their associations and their meanings and all the images and thoughts that come with them sing a song that I can’t hear, only feel, but it resonates throughout all that I am until I am humming, thrumming with this song that makes me so light and happy and completely ecstatic.

I want to be a wife. I want to be a mother. Not because I am lonely or desperate or because it is ‘normal’ and ‘expected.’ I want to be a wife and a mother — and a teacher — because I have so much love to share. Because I want to explore this world with someone special, and I want to show its wonders to my children. I want to share this life — and the next, and the next, and the next.

And this wanting ache sits right in the middle of my chest, sinking down into my stomach and pulling at all my innards, twisting everything around until it’s just a giant knot, that then crawls back up into my throat and sits there, just beyond the reach of my lips and tongue, leaving me unable to say any of this to the people I feel need to know it the most.

I know I’m only twenty-two; I know I’m young, and that I have my whole life ahead of me. But that’s just it. It’s my life. And in my life, I want to be a wife, and a mother, and teacher. I know I should wait until I’m stable and steady, but that doesn’t lessen the wanting and the dreaming and the hoping.

Someday, though… I will. I will be a wife. I will be a mother. I will be a teacher.

I’ll be yours.

The sweetest song I’ve ever heard
Is my name upon your lips.

Symphony and orchestra together,
And chorus sweetly sung;
Such is the song that plays
Each time you say my name.