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Oh, my love, my dearest heart.
When you speak, I am reminded of a cool autumn night. Leaves cascading around me, their life long gone from them but the colors of their death throes painting the dappled ground. Birds wheel and cry overhead, their songs drowning out the unnatural rumble of cars on the scorched roads. A strong breeze whips over the surface of chilly water, impossibly deep and choked with weeds and serene, harmless life. The chill, my dear, which you treasure so much.
Oh, my autumn heart, you're painted in gold and red and the razor edge of frost at the breast of winter. You chase away the wicked, unrelenting heat of the posterior summer and herald the arrival of the winter's comforting frigidity. You are neither summer nor winter, something both and neither, cloaked in the ethereal beauty of birches and oaks and tamaracks as they warp and transform into something just as in-between. You are autumn incarnate, and I am blessed to have had my heart stolen by you in the very season you elicit memories of.
Oh, my golden-painted love, your voice is ever-shifting. One day, you may bring to mind the warmth and color of early autumn, with its bountiful harvests, migrating birds, and sunny days. The lilt and soft edges envelop whoever may hear you in a gentle haven, a glade beneath fire-bright boreal forest and whispering leaves. The next, your calm tone embodies the comfort of icy days spent walking beneath the sleeping colossi of spruces and cedars, of silent water just beginning to form a shell of protection against the frigid wind. You are the warmth of the early fall sun, the power of late autumn's frigid winds, and you amaze me.
Oh, my frost-mottled beauty, your face is the loveliest thing I’ve seen. Your skin, softer than slowly-dozing moss and knit sweaters, never fails to draw my hands to it. I can hardly resist pressing my thumbs to your face, tracing the lines of your smile and laughter, following where pigment changes and pressing feather-light kisses to every inch of your ethereal visage. Your nose, oh, the nose you’ve expressed such distaste for, is naught but a magnet for my lips. Many are the kisses I've lain on it, many are the soft words I've whispered to you about it. When I see your mouth, the soft curve of it, the plush fullness of your lips, God, I can't help myself. The taste of you, the soft whisper of your breath against my face, the way your tongue feels against mine…it brings to mind the familiarity of mid-autumn. The laughter and sweet treats of Halloween, the crackle of embers in a wood-fired stove. Your lips are the symbol of autumn, of bountiful harvests and quiet festival holidays spent indoors.
Oh, your eyes, your eyes. My dear, my serene heart, your eyes are the very embodiment of late autumn. With their pale sage, they show me the last dregs of green in the leaves overhead before they're consumed by fire-gold. I see in your eyes my present, my future, my infinity. You are everything to me, to my life, to my love. I can recall many a day when those pale emeralds gazed into my soul, and you laid your heart bare to me with naught but your most honest and raw memories, opinions, stories. Your eyes are the greenery making its last rounds before slipping into a deep slumber for the coldest days, the soft reeds around still water retaining the last hints of life before succumbing to the chill. Your eyes are persistently, persistently green, inextinguishable and verdant in their own muted way.
Oh, my autumn heart, you are my future. You are my love, my everything, and I can only hope you see me the same.
I love you, my autumn heart.