Geode: for Liz and Helen

A couple of weeks ago I went to a celebration of Liz and Helen's civil partnership. Liz and Helen are both talented members of Chester Poets and so, as part of the event, there were songs and readings. Although I am more of a prose writer than a poet I was delighted when they asked me to contribute too, so I wrote this...

Geode.

It is not the colour of your eyes that I love, but the way they look in the morning just before they open. I say your name and something around them softens, then they open and it is as if my whole world is in there, lost in their depths.

It is not your voice that I love but the things that it says: your dreams of me and you, your promises, your memories of another land, barren and cold, before us, you say, before now.

It is not the shape of your hands that I love but the way they hold mine: soft, warm, a second skin. Never let me go, I say, and you smile and your hands tighten.

Those are the three things: your eyes, your voice, your hands. Each one unremarkable, like a rough stone a gardener could uncover in his garden. The sort he would throw to one side never knowing that inside was a little miracle: a tiny cave encrusted with crystals, each one storing light like a secret, releasing it with a glow when you enter the room.