All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

Ernest Hemingway

Juliet, each successive day of our marriage I see you again for the first time. All my mornings become some scale of joy and resolve I could not have known prior to the waves that brought us to this common shore.

Us is a word strewn about in definition and accepted usage to represent things so simple as matters relating to more than the one and to those as profound as a metaphysical sameness. I contend that in our case Us is the unique. Us two friends and compassionate partners is not so much the completion of the other as the existence of an entity.

Our entity, our us is a transmigration of our willful spirits. Our us is synergy existing between two common ideas thrusting this life of unusual verve out into a sea of natural human scrutiny. This life, this us is what perseveres over doubts that raise themselves in common hours. Our us is something that must be fed with enormous effort and from every hungry corner of our existence as it seeks constant nourishment.

There are books and photos, meals and song, as well as the points of ecstasy so often hidden in moments of simplicity that are all facets of us. Yet, none of these singular events can come close to defining our Us. Nothing is simple about this us Juliet. Yet, nothing is difficult either. In the great halls that serve as our minds there are banquets of dreams that wait to be furnished by us. We wake each day with the knowledge that our eyes may not know the spaces our bodies occupy but they will find comfort only a wrist away in the touch of the other.

Us is so fortunate in moments like today when we are each, because it is in the day-to-day cavern of acceptance that the components of us can most clearly see the impetus for this journey.

Have we really even breathed since we met Juliet? Have we taken real stock of just how auspicious this beginning has been? Only last night we considered the year to year and how strange seem to be the memories of the people who became Us. Us has made the truth much more attainable for the people that we were before.

I was,and would have continued to be a drifter on a road to personal acceptance that likely would have had no terminus had we not met. I cannot even ponder where you might have gone had that moment of discovery slipped past my keyboard those short years ago.

Now, Juliet, now it is an Us that stops the motion of the planet and the birth and death of the sun that is nearly upon us. It is the journey once again to a place where I think I knew that Us existed 20 years ago and that Us became a reality when we touched down there together. Us now seeks to return home with a fervor akin to a series of relived wedding nights. Out of control and into the arms of Us is where I long to be. This is where you take me my sweet wife. This is because I never wanted to belong anywhere so much as here in this company of two; in this bounty of Us.

I publicly proclaim my solemn vows to you again on this morning of joyous celebration. It is in faith, hope, and love that I pledge my life and work to our cause. In your brightest of eyes I see the reflections of Us as I see them nowhere else. You are my love and my greatest joy. Should I do no work that pleases an audience ever again or that I make no story to humor even myself, I will know that my greatest fortune was being part of Us, and it always will be.

Juliet, you remain the bright and shining light and I will follow you all the days of my life.

Happy Anniversary My Love,

Michael