I choose you

Under a thick summer rain and the soft voices of emotion, it was difficult to hear what was said last Saturday. Here are the words Micael and I shared with one another.

Micael:

Briana, I choose you.

From the moment we met I found myself drawn to you and could not help but want to constantly talk to you. We spoke of traveling, food, culture, and everything else we were learning about. Your kindness and thoughtfulness is part of what made it possible to share so much with you. Today I am here to tell you that I will be here to continue sharing all of me with you through the good and bad times ahead in our journey together. That I will take care of you along this journey and express the love that I have for you each and every day, no matter the place, or the language.

Je t'aime, te quiero, te amo, I love you.

Briana:

Micael,

I didn’t know when I met you that I would fall in love with you. But after learning who you were and who we were together, I fell very hard. And in that falling there was a choosing. I chose you then and I’ve chosen you every day since.

I love you for your kindness, your patience, your gentleness, your curiosity. I love you for the person you bring out in me, for making me feel at home when I’m with you.

Now, I vow to love you in our life together—in the small things and the big things, to love you when it’s easy and also when it’s hard. I vow to love you when we’re sick and when we’re well, in the shade and the sunshine. I vow to love you for who you are now and who you will become. I vow to be faithful to you, to create a family with you, to build a home with you, and to never give up on you, or on us.

You have every part of me. I choose you now and every day I have.

And the poem we read at the beginning of our vows:

Soneto LXXXI

Already you are mine. Rest with your dream inside my dream.

Love, grief, labour, must sleep now

Night revolves on invisible wheels

and joined to me you are pure as sleeping amber.

No one else will sleep with my dream, love.

You will go we will go joined by the waters of time.

No other one will travel the shadows with me,

only you, eternal nature, eternal sun, eternal moon.

Already your hands have opened their delicate fists

and let fall, without direction, their gentle signs,

your eyes enclosing themselves like two grey wings,

while I follow the waters you bring that take me onwards:

night, Earth, winds weave their fate, and already,

not only am I not without you, I alone am your dream.

Pablo Neruda