48 and turning

48 revolutions around the sun
and I have watched you for seven, nearly eight,
of them.

Not from a distance,
but from the quiet, privileged center
where the noise of the world falls away.

I have seen the way time treats you
not as a thief, but as an artist
polishing the edges of your spirit,
deepening the light in your eyes.

While the seasons shifted and the years gathered,
I sat beside you in the slow theater of everyday life,
learning the architecture of your grace.

Like that distant, cosmic traveler
making its slow way through the dark everythingness,
you arrived in my orbit when our stories were already half-written...

And yet everything changed.

Every year of watching you has been a lesson
in how a single soul can anchor an entire universe.

To see you at 48
is to witness the quiet triumph of everything real.

The old delays, the years before our paths crossed,
all of it dissolves into the background of this room,
this breath,
this steady heartbeat beside mine.

You are the destination.

And as the years keep turning,
so do I,
right alongside and beside you.