iceland

to my wildest affection,
my coldest embrace,
the one which I would hold onto for ever.

oh, to watch the open road disappear before us as we cover ground, chasing after the things mapped out in our minds.
watching landscapes paint pictures on either side of us, changing at the same pace as the wind blowing us in new directions towards greater things.

there was no force pulling me away from you at any moment along the way. I would get lost in each one as if every part of the journey was a dream designed by my own deepest longing and desires. to me, you were the earth’s wildest display of ineffable beauty. words were lost to me. lost in the way that they might’ve been swallowed up by crevasses in the earth pointing to some form of heaven carved into the ground. they were mountains. your mountains were eternal to me- the closest things to eternity that I could grasp and eternal in their ethereal beauty. I would brush my hand across the rolling hills from a distance as if to feel some form of nearness to them and the the fields that surrounded them- the same fields that made me feel free.

you were a clash of every earthly and unearthly form and you wore it gracefully. one glance into a distant forest and a heart as whimsical as my own could be lost for ever. I searched beyond them and found dry branches and tufts of fire to be as much of a dance parter as the stars when they came out at night. we would dance upon the horizon and the border between earth and smoke, billowing toward that which was more than either of us were ever able to fathom, or put in words.

it was rippling and raw.
majestic and untamed.

I would cling to every moment if I could. looking back, I can feel it wrenching at my chest. such beauty, I thought, could only ever exist in the depths of my imagination. I longed beyond its shores. beyond the mist that descended upon the hills before the storm rolled in. I longed for its mountains- the mountains to which belonged such tender portions of my heart. I could gaze upon its beauty for a thousand years, whispering poems of adoration and it would never amount to the love that I possessed for a land so far from my own. 

for you, I am a wreckage. I am a plane upon your shores. I am the line in between. the white crashing against the black sands. the mist descending. my feet explorers of every breath of life rising from your bones. you were the fall- the waterfall collapsing. I am the surrender to the ice I have not yet felt. the head I have rested upon your moss. you were the chill in the wind, the violent grasp of the waves. you were more than a dream and I would spend my life trudging back and forth across your shoreline to be able to read even the first few letters of your name.

you were everything to me and I still feel you even when I am not drenched in the chill of your embrace. it still lingers on my fingertips, the ones that left my lips as I blew a final kiss to that rock bursting out of that ocean. so tenderly waiting for its lover- that lover at shore, who would drop a tear into its waters and feel it flooding back once more. 

I will return to you, my love. Ég kem aftur, elskan mín. this is not the last of my letters. I will think of your beauty as I rise, just as much as when I sleep, and I will remember the way that your mountains laid their head on your soil out of love and wonder and grace. I will belong to you as you have belonged to me and I will search for you in every present moment until I call you my home.

your words

Hold back the words,
that you have want for loss of it.
Not of speech, but of feeling:
to gaze upon and know that it has an end.

Beauty was a given. The peaks that you reached were far superior to the word. Although, there was still so much of it that needed unraveling. The same fire that used to threaten us didn’t scare us anymore, but a distant echo still resonated a shivering fate: it is words that have kept us together and words that will keep us apart. Your words were never mine to find, yet when I discovered them hidden amongst the pages of dreams awake, every other word lay sleeping and time stood still in their place.

I hear, and yet cannot be the same and think of you at once. I write of them, sometimes. Your words. The ones that banish time and distance altogether. I have found safety in the reverie that we would not exist without them. Each one playing their hand, never reaching a check mate, but rather falling deeper into the mine which we’ve created for one another, laced with feelings of weakness- destruction in an unwavering tone.

I will not pretend that I didn’t search for traces of you amongst the trees, that I didn’t look for your shadow on the beckoning horizon. I thought that if I would stretch my arm out far enough that it would reach you and you would make the leaves disappear. We’d find shelter in the cold- a longing for the mist to wrap itself around us in a waltz. My hope-filled hands faced upwards, tracing the light that was left beneath the clouds. I could feel the falling, I could hear your pulse in the wind. I heard that distant flickering and found meaning within the melodies which we shared, for I knew that you were there- I knew that you were within them.

But darling, if darkness was the muse and you were the light and darkness was the way in which we found ourselves, illuminated by the absence of light, made stronger by the presence of love and abandonment to all things, where did you find your entrance? Where did they come to exist?

I lived in the wildness of them- the shuddering stillness of them. I discovered worlds within the words wrapped in grace, wrapped in wonder. I belonged to them. Within them, I found my shelter- more than that. They shed light on the earth and it was there that I found you. Never was there a more beautiful grace upon the earth than the one I found in that distant echo of

you.

They will remain safe with me- your words. I will continue to find refuge within them. They will continue to silence the rest of them. I will allow them to chill me to the bone, even when it aches. Even when they merely exist, when I cannot comprehend the truth of what they are, darling, you are still a mountain to me, and it is so that you will always be.