If a stranger were to ask me who all the great loves in my life were, I would say your name several times. You as my first, forbidden love when I was coming in to my own in a strange Colorado and found you when I should never have even been looking; how something about my eyes or your voice or our providential proximity made us gravitate toward one another like magnets. And then there was you the explored love, when I found myself lengthening to reach your heights, arching my spine to open from the heart, when we never stopped listening to each other because we had so much to share.We found a constant love in the kitchen of my apartment where we were happy getting drunk just the two of us, and you held me on the counter and we cried because we felt so lucky, and we drank because we believed it would last. 

You became my partner in love and together we navigated our youth, and the mountains, and sometimes with heavy hearts we navigated our shortcomings but always decided to walk the path together.  We held each other up to the lights of our promises and you taught me what it felt like to be part of an idea that became more than the two who made up its parts. I was 22 at a Furthur show when we celebrated your birthday and you whispered who I was to you, from then on you also became the love who was my best friend.  You have been the love who protects me in sleep and makes space for me in his days.You have been the love who has given me a great sense of pride and even greater sense of belonging, the love I call Home, who spread his arms and circled around to carve out a space for us to share.

You are now and will always be my unchanging love, the one with the kind eyes, the lover of my true self, the one who stepped away to grow and who settled apart in space to seek and yet you remain.