XIX. THE YEARS THAT SEPARATE US The years that separate us become the miles that separate us. Time and distance are the tension, the aphrodisiac. I wandered the world for twenty-two years before you were ever born, then wandered another twenty-one before you came into my arms. How many years will you go on living after I am gone? And how long can the distances hold us apart, keeping us from the embrace of our sane passion for one another? I love your joyful body, your whispering voice that contains the honey of centuries. You are the earth and sky, the flower and river. In the place where we come from, the place where we derive our light, the home we have leapt from in order to search for one another: in that place where we have always been and to which we must eventually return, I am eternally your lover.