I Love You Like This

For my two little loves-

You warm me like my morning sips of coffee, saturating my rib cage with comfort and my lips with sweetness.

I love you the way the flowers love new spring days, pushing past dark soil to find sweet breezes and pale sunshine.

You frightened and delighted me as if I were on the edge of a diving board suspended high above a blue pool. I unknowingly inched closer and closer, finally taking a leap into something large and deep and consuming.

I love you the way the fragile stars love the night sky, clinging to it to keep them above the sadness of the world.

You give me the feeling I've only ever felt the first time I saw the ocean, my landlocked soul breaking free into the coldest water and most enormous crashes of sound.

I love you the way my name was fitted to me, or I was born in the middle of this great, wide country; I was meant for it, and you were meant for me.

Bigger than any poem I've ever hoped to write.
Better teachers than any professor in front of a dusty chalkboard.
Sweeter than anything else this world could ever offer me.

You make me believe I was meant for a life I've only just begun to live- the life of being a mother to you.