What is beauty?
Tell me, love.
What is it?
For I have searched long
and waited hours of soft grains to be told
and still – I do not know.

When I was small,
I thought beauty was a lady – A mother.
Full of curves and smiles
and pale, beautiful arms,
always there, to encircle little bodies;
and lips that gave kisses
not like presents, but like blessings
that banished scaly, slimy monsters.

But, love, I grew,
and beauty became mirrors
and cut stones and screaming bouquets.
Beauty was bright and bold – Elegant.
It was a golden fountain of pleasures
and if I drank enough,
it would all be mine.
The fine things, the hot scents.

Beauty was a competition.
A race.
But then, love, I grew again.

Now beauty was a body.
A face.
A voice.
A familiar touch given each day,
as subtle and as sweet as the greenness of new grapes.
Beauty became you, love,
and your words wove tapestries of life, of water
and your mind became the most beautiful thing.
Finery faded, to be replaced by whimsy sense,
and you, love, filled me.

Your beauty became our beauty,
and our beauty became theirs.
I remember, love, watching them.
To hear their voices was beautiful.
To watch them sleep.
To see them smile,
their white teeth like stars.

Love, beauty became quiet nights,
warm, wrapped in your presence,
wrapped in the presence of you,
long after they had all gone and passed more beauty
and experienced the arms, and the stones, and the tapestries of love.
Beauty became sitting in old chairs,
on old porches,
watching the sun,
watching life.
Beauty became a pair of hands, filled with blue veins
and wrinkled creases.
Your hands, love.

Now, love, I feel back.
I sense the womb.
Feel the red.
Of warm blood. Of a beautiful maternity.
I recall, faintly – Being within.
The contentedness of not knowing,
of just being,
of existing at the start.
That is beauty also, love.

I realize now, that I have found an answer.
Love, beauty is not one thing. Beauty is many.
It is so much.
So much of life is beautiful.
I realize now, that through my simple question,
I have awakened more beauty than I could have ever thought to exist.
Thank you, love, for being a piece of beauty in my life.