How do you do what you do? Your hair is new. Your face is new. It’s like you’re in some rollback machine, where people are singing, “Everything old is new again!” Ginger’s glamour, and yet it’s Mary-Anne’s setting of a heart on fire! You can play any role in the show and win the Oscar! You’re yin and yang! You’re sensational from top to bottom! Front to back! You’re an absolute powerhouse of a picture of perfection! It doesn’t get better than you! I promise it does not. If it does? Well, it will be you! *Again!* Topping what you did the last time out! Even when you barely get a word in, you’re the one who is felt. It’s always you. You’re heard when you barely utter a word. When you do, we cling to every one! Like a Beatles album in the late Sixties, deciphering them line by line! “What did she *mean* when she said this? Brilliant and witty as always, but is there a hidden meaning somewhere in here?” It’s what you do when you’re in love. Hoping to mine beneath her words for clues, even if there is none. Of where a heart resides. Like really truly, deep down inside. Because you’re too good to be true. Nobody is so beautiful as you. Nobody does what you do. It seems cruel to all those others who don’t stand a chance with you. To be barraged by your beauty! Too much sun will decimate the crops. A voice inside yells, “You can’t handle it, kid!” But that’s not what you do to me. By adoring you so long, I’ve learned. Your smile goes on for miles and miles, and I hitch a ride. Wherever it is you are going, I’m going there, too. Inside. It’s all inside. When your eyes arrive, I fall over backwards, and I come out the other side. Of my life. Inside. Because when I feel that intoxication that only you can provide, I flip it over, and I bathe in it two times. This catharsis that has no words. In browns and blacks and three-inch heels, you’re that glee-filled jumping into a freshly raked pile of leaves! In autumn time. You’re that first springtime drive with the top down, and with nowhere to arrive. There’s nowhere to go on such a splendid day. You just drive! On and on! Fueled by your glow. You can have anyone you want at the drop of a heart. You could even assign roles! Pointing to each one: Lover! Friend! The one who lifts me when I’m low! And they’d take any job you assign! And be so thrilled to get it! Even with no hope of advancement! It’s how you’re defined. People feel they know you. You have that gift, among all your others. People spend their nights wondering, ‘Would that make her laugh?’ ‘Would she like the look of this?’ When wearing a tie. Or a pair of new eyeglasses that just today arrived. What would *she* think? A common inner question. So many people, all dying inside. Over you. And you don’t even know them. And yet they feel that they do. Know you. At least in some little way. Because when you appear, it doesn’t matter the venue or who is around. The world goes away, and all that remains is you and a heart beating fast. And love expresses, so beautiful in colors like that. In your aura of reds and blues and golds. Today you’re in brown and it complements your auburn. Sometimes pine, and sometimes there is pining. More often it’s simply splendor. How could there not be desire? You’re a goddess. Truly so. It seems almost an insult to put an “a” before it! Better to say *the* or leave out the pronoun completely. Goddess. It fits. Simply. That’ll do. Economy of words. So not my strong suit! But Goddess will do. It sums you up. It subtracts nothing. You multiply bliss by a hundred and two! You divide and conquer and all spoils go to you. Today with a sea of fours pointing up like angelic sailboats from the scrolls. As if to say, it’s all okay. Breathe. Just bathe in her bliss. Let it restore. And let it return. Back to the source. Of you. Beautiful, wonderful you. You are perfection through and through. Just when I think you can’t get better, you do. It’s what you do. What’s difficult for others, in terms of getting through – where there are layers hiding and walls protecting, you are seen, and a heart is simply offered. In the hand. Hold it, or let it drop to the floor. Do with it what you will. So simply. And another says, “Where was that heart when I was looking?! Jumping through hoops and falling through these trap doors! And for her it’s simply there?” A lot of arguments must go on like that one in living rooms throughout the land. And she gives that smile of hers, and then a little blow on her half-closed fist, and rubs it off above her chest, as if to say, “ I don’t know what to say. When you got it, you got it!” And the world agrees. You’re diamonds and daisies. You’re a midsummer night’s breeze. Your expressions are too countless to count, but I’ve noted at least twenty-three. And they’re filed away. The pursed lip wide-eyed look you give! That look is a killer! If you haven’t fallen in love with her yet, that’s the one that will do you in! But it’s the smile – oh, her smile! – where her eyes kind of crinkle. There are no tears in them, but all you see is water. Vast oceans swimming inside you. Her power is softened by her beauty. There’s that pleasure-pain principle all over again. Her bliss is extraordinary. It carries you through. But there has to be some element of pain – in the yearning and the deepest wishing you could someday be a friend. Because she tears you up inside, and you realize in order to grow there must be some pain. At least on occasion! All joy would be pleasing, but not much change happens there. You can save that for when you get home, when forever one with the sun. But there is learning to do here! And there is growing indeed! Months ago you would have given in to the agony. Like lesser hearts do! But you’ve grown from the pain and you put it to use. To see her so beautiful! Her magic exudes! And that familiar pining of wishing to be somewhere nearer. Somewhere oh-just-a-bit-closer to adore. Now when that old feeling rolls in through the bliss, you sublimate it. Right from the start! You never go down. No, not into it, because that’s not where she is. You rise to the top, you’re up in the clouds! Again basking in her sound. Ah, you so adore her voice! It’s manna from the gods! You turn it around! In an instant! And it comes so easily now. And, with so much practice, you’ve become a bit of a pro. Casting away thoughts that don’t serve, the moment they enter. Instead only breathing in the beauty of her, and living in that splendor. She’s the most beautiful girl in the world. The verdict has been decided. Through and through. Deliberations of the jury lasted about a minute! And it’s only because they had some powder room time to use! The gavel sounds with a swift knock to your soul. We find the plaintiff the most heart-stopping woman the world will ever know! She’s innocent! She’s life itself! Enraptured by her eyes. She’s everything new! And there is no appeal. There’s only her appeal. And her appeal will do! She catapults you over the moooooon!!! A sleety snowy day becomes an amusement park of thrills! With fireworks and cotton candy! All because of her!! No retrial stands a chance! She’s written into supreme law. It starts and ends. With her. In her supreme court. This goddess with an endless line of suitors all wishing to court. Her! And there’s no repealing her law! It’s written in the stars. You’d only fall in love once, however unrequited, with the most spellbinding girl alive! That is your sentence. It sure sounds a heavy burden, doesn’t it? When in fact it is bliss! Sure, there’s some pain in spurts, but you grow through it, and she makes you better. Oh, so far better than you ever were before! You wish you had seen her in 1994! It would have saved you two decades and a half of crawling when you didn’t know you could run! Like Forrest Gump soaring, and all his shackles are left in the dust! We’re about the same size and perhaps the same I.Q.! You would have sailed through all those old doors of the past! If only you had seen her then! Faster and faster, instead of tumbling you sprint! Past the finish line! With such confidence! Oh, it’s that confidence she provides! And you say, “What other race you got for me? The morning is still so young!” It’s what she does! She’s marigolds and symphonies. She’s sleepless nights of wondering. How do you do what you do? How do you take a lost soul and turn him rightsize up? How do you take a hopeless day and fill it with your light? How is it you’re so totally loved without any seeming effort! And when my strength draws low, you fill me again! An endless well, it travels to the center of the earth! And out the other side again! So that China and the U.S. are saying, “Hey, whoa, wait! Which part of her magic do we tariff??” But there’s no touching her. And another little secret you let me know: It’s always as if it’s coming from you, and yet you pull it from my inside out. A-ha!! And you wink! At me! *Sigh!* Well, in a way, you do! You say, “Look what you got!” And I hear, “You can handle it, kid!” from that inner voice inside. Your smile beaming through. How do you thank someone for changing him through and through? Clearing the cobwebs and filling the rooms with such light! That’s how it feels for me. You remind me I have a beauty, too. One I couldn’t see, through years upon years of self-imposed misery. You let me shine, too. You let me know it’s all okay. It’s even okay to love you. That love is you. And now it’s me. We don’t have to touch or hold hands to conduct a symphony. That love from your baton, it’s now expressed by an orchestra! Of oh so many smiling faces in ecstasy! Ethereal sounds, it’s the music of your spheres. And there is so much healing. So much restoring going on. It starts in your eyes. At least that’s how it is for me. You’re so precious and so wonderful. Your beauty sets me free. In a world of eight billion-plus-two, it had to be you. You’re the only one who could do all this for me. Your light, patterning the sea. I was another lost soul, and your beauty set me free. How do you do what you do? All that no one else could never ever do? Including myself, seemingly. And then the most beautiful woman in the world came along. And she smiled. At me! At least that’s how it feels. The day’s memory of you becomes a lullaby at night. Cast by your eyes, I sleep soundly and safe. Carried by the memory of you, you are the stuff of dreams. Oh, the healing that you do. And tomorrow I’ll rise again, filled with love and hope anew. For no matter what the day brings. You’ve set me on sail. You’ve given me my wings. May angels always protect and lovingly look over you. ❤️