Henry’s Vows

Mr very, very Audrey,

In two days, it will be exactly nine years since you first asked me to kiss you and we began the rest of our lives together. I don’t know what I was doing nine years ago today. Probably we texted, I went to class, saw some friends. I know I was thinking about you. About [EDIT THIS PART], your brilliance and the warmth that brilliance cast around you. I felt like I couldn’t keep up with you, and I could never have known I would get to spend the rest of my life trying. 

My love began even then, and I vow to love you more deeply every day, as I always have; to show you that love, in all the ways I know how; and to learn new ways all the time, so that my actions can attempt to reflect the depth of the love I feel. “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.”

I am blessed to live two lives: the one I see, and the one I get to experience through you. An entire world has opened up within the bounds of one small life. I have already lived more and more fully than most who die old men, and this is thanks to you, your words, your mind. I vow always to take advantage of this gift by listening and understanding you, even in moments when understanding feels impossible. It never is, with us.

I can’t imagine anybody understanding me more than you do, and I you. I know we want the same things for each other. I know why we want these things, and I know that we can only do them together. This is the great comfort of my life, that no matter what may happen in this world, I have you. You make it easy to see the good in the world. With how I feel for you, and the trust I have in how you feel for me, the world can only get so dim. “And in thy sight to die, what were it else but like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?” I vow to see the light for both of us in times of darkness.

I have seen you play Rosalind, Imogen, Viola, the Princess of France, Gertrude, Jo March; “in one person, many people”. “She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual.” Dorian Gray says that and it doesn’t end well for them, but let’s not dwell on that… The point is: there is too much inside of you to express it in one person, and I vow to love and hold every facet of you until the day I die.

But my greatest aspiration can only be to repay in kind what joy, what peace, and what meaning you give to every action and still moment of my life. I vow to try, always and ardently. I love you.