If they were to ask me how much I love you, I would not know what to say.

I would lower my gaze, smile quietly, and choose silence over an answer.

Not because I have none, but because every answer I could give would be smaller than the truth.

How could I measure something that has woven itself into my every thought?

How could I count something that follows me into every morning, lingers through every afternoon, and keeps me company in the quiet of the night?

If they asked me to write it down, I would fill pages.

If they asked for more, I would fill books.

And if they still wished to know, I would spend my entire life writing, only to discover that I had barely begun.

Even if I were to write of my love for you with my own blood instead of ink,

I would still feel that it was not enough. For blood may tell them that my love is sincere, but it could never tell them how your name softens my hardest days, how your smile lingers in my mind long after it is gone, or how the thought of you finds its way into the smallest corners of my life.

How could I explain that some days you feel like a prayer, and other days like the answer to one?

How could I explain that I see beautiful things and immediately wish you were there to see them too?

Or that the world seems somehow gentler whenever I imagine you in it?

No, if they were to ask me how much I love you, I would simply remain silent.

Then I would point toward the sky, toward the sea, toward every star that has ever shone, and every dawn that has ever arrived.

Not because they are equal to my love, but because they are the closest things I know to something that refuses to end.

And even then, I would feel that I had failed to describe it. For my love for you has long outgrown the language meant to contain it.