The one who holds my heart, You.

I have not bartered with the merchants' fire,
Nor spread my soul upon their painted stalls;
The gold they lift is only winter's lyre
That sings where no immortal swallow calls.
The hands that count the kingdoms of the earth
Have never weighed the silence of my name,
For I was fashioned long before their birth
Within a star that never learned its flame.

What shall they purchase? Dust may ransom dust;
The moon does not descend for minted kings.
The oak does not surrender from its trust
Because a beggar crowns himself with rings.
There is a measure hidden from all eyes,
A secret scale the angels dare not keep;
Its balance rests beyond the mortal skies,
Where Heaven counts the things too vast to reap.

What I have sought no marketplace can hold.
Not happiness—the sugared mask men wear,
Not little joys wrapped up in borrowed gold,
Nor laughter rehearsed to perfume despair.
I ask the soul beneath the borrowed face,
The woman unafraid to lose her form,
Who walks into love's terrible embrace
As cedars welcome every winter storm.

Have you been loved until your bones could hear
The whisper of another beating there?
Have you stood trembling where delight and fear
Were woven like one ribbon through the air?
Where every kiss became a sacred wound,
Each silence heavier than spoken vows;
Where freedom circled like a hunting hound,
Yet never left the altar of your house?

Such love is neither prison nor release.
It is the narrow bridge no map has shown,
Where longing wars forever against peace,
And both together carve the spirit's stone.
Most turn away before the mist grows thin;
The valley smiles with easy, sleeping flowers.
They fear the holy wilderness within,
And choose instead the comfort built by hours.

Who follows then?

Not every wandering heart may bear this flame.
Only the woman brave enough to see
That love is not a garment nor a name,
But the slow undoing of identity.
Not one who gathers glances as her bread,
Nor dances only where applause is loud;
The peacock wears a hundred jeweled threads,
Yet cannot speak above the passing crowd.

Seduction is a lantern in the rain—
A little theatre of borrowed light,
Its crimson curtains beautiful, yet vain,
Its actors gone before the fall of night.
Passion is older than the birth of stars;
It does not beg the eye to understand.
It enters softly through forgotten scars
And builds cathedrals with an unseen hand.

Walk fiercely.

The wolves will know your footsteps from afar.
The rivers shall remember how you bled.
The heavens write their covenants in scars,
Not in the jeweled promises men said.
For I have learned my heart is sacred ground,
A vineyard hidden from the common road,
Where only those whom faithfulness has crowned
May kneel beneath its ancient, living bough.

Bring not sweet speeches polished smooth with art.
The wind has carried thousands unto me.
Words bloom like roses, then they fall apart;
Roots alone persuade the oldest tree.
Show me the language written without sound:
The hand that stays when every light has fled,
The soul that guards another's holy ground
As though her own bright breath were there instead.

Then I shall open every hidden gate.
The stars will lean like listeners through the leaves.
The swans that haunt the everlasting lake
Will circle where eternity believes.
Not because either conquered or possessed,
Nor because either yielded to desire,
But because two immortal spirits guessed
The face of God concealed within the fire.

And should the world still offer all its gold,
Its jeweled kingdoms, crowns, and fleeting praise,
We would not turn; such treasures all grow old,
Like morning frost consumed by autumn days.
For love that dares to empty and remake
Outvalues every empire history knew—
The rarest thing that Heaven chose to make,
And one I would surrender all for... you.