It has been exactly one year. One year since you hugged me like you would never let me go. Since that moment when we parted and I was left with the tingling awareness of your fingertips leaving mine. And as I tried to contain all of you within me, with each step that increased the distance between us a sense of bereavement eclipsed all else in my life.

"These hours are mine" you said when we met at the airport, pulling me into your arms, gathering me wholly - bruises and pride, faults and false convictions - into the warmth of your heart, "you belong solely to me." And I gave myself up completely, plans swept unresistingly aside to be replaced by your spontaniety. With one look you unleashed a sea of pounding madness. The hours and days melded, stretching farther than the infinite sky. And I was drunk on the look in your eyes, the eyes that became my sun and my moon.

"Do you need anything?" you asked me, several times, on the long winding drive over hills and mountains through the night to your home as I sat next to you, enveloped by your presence. Always it is only you I shall need, my need for you greater than the sustenance of the earth. Your love the only element I need for existence. Your love is the land that bears me, the sky that shelters me, the air I inhale and exhale, the essence of my soul, the ardent sun that paints the world in living colors, the dark night lit with a billion stars that cloaks me in its warmth.

"Put me to sleep" I begged you, tired of the inexhaustion of your overwhelming energy. And you did. I lay cradled in your lap, asleep, oblivious of the burning midday sun, the jutting rocks on the hillside poking into the softness of my flesh.

I tried to contain all of you within me, but I miss you so fiercely. Gather me back to your beloved shores.