My Sunset

I say, "I love you forever."

I say, "I've loved you forever. Even before I knew it."

This is not because I know with the utmost certainty that this love will last past the redwood forests and outlast granite tombstones, but because it is what I hope. That is what love is, based upon hope. That is who I am, human in the most inexcusable definition of my kind.

Hope is humanity. It is what nations are built upon and great men rise upon. It is rags to riches. It searches for passage across great bodies of water. It survives the concentration camp. It outlasts famine and drought. We raise our children upon it, a staple like cold cereal and milk. It is the changing seasons and the revolution of the earth around the sun, and the moon around the earth, and the earth about her axis. This is more exact than science and more indefinable than God or gods or ghosts and missing links. It is getting halfway through a book knowing that Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy will be together. The poets of the nations are right.
Hope
will
not
die.

***

The sky here stretches past sight and imagination. I'm alone. The sun sets behind clouds and beneath the sea casting red and pink across the horizon and splashing the sky with sea blue colors. The maritime tones linger long past the sunset.

I am alone. Only my camera is with me to record what words cannot describe. The sound of gulls and the white crests of waves are the only thing I hear.

She made me promise to live longer than herself. Even at the beginning we know that there will be an end. And yet we still go on like ships through fog near rocky shores. Lead, log, and lookout, yet this is no small matter of mathematics.

I adjust the iso setting with the fading light. Hold my breath to keep my hands steady for the slower shutter speed.

How can I hope when I know all will end? We are like fading sunsets, not two are ever the same and brief before they are gone forever beneath the sea. Only fiction is happily-ever-after and this is no fairytale that we pursue.

Hope is no foundation. It will fight no battles for me. It will not feed me. It will not make us live forever. Nations fall. Seas dry up. Children grow old and cynical. The earth grows old. Each night the sun falls beneath the horizon.

Yet I say, "I love you forever, I've always loved you. Before I knew it. Before I knew you. Before and after time fades into oblivion. Twice as much as yesterday, the same increase as each day since past."

I hope defy time, science, prescience, quantum relativity, and death. Yet what am I is restricted by humanity, the very thing that feeds my ambitions.

"I love you. This is more than hope."

Tomorrow. I'll capture another sunset before it too disappears forever.

We are like the sun that falls beneath the sea. It is the same sun as the day before, but not the same. We live in such a brief moment, but I cannot help but think her beautiful.

All we have is cynical hope. Foolish hope. Because we know we are hopeless.

Someday perhaps I will keep that promise I made. Sit on a beach alone. Watch one more sunset. Look back without regret. And happy because even time spent hoping love will last a lifetime when I know it will not last more than sixty years, was worth every second spent.

I love you more than all the suns that rest beneath the sea.