i didn't know you were beautiful

i didn’t know you were beautiful.

i ignored the world you painted and the people you created and exchanged it all

for what i heard you were.

i set you aside for shallow satisfaction in cracked cisterns and wondered

why i always found myself to be so thirsty.

all the beauty in the world won’t make a blind man see.

yet you pursued me.

you opened my eyes to see what had always been there,

what i had never noticed before.

beauty reached down to beast and saw in me what i could not see in myself.

you saw me as yours.

now your love overwhelms me.

it swells inside my heart and threatens to burst forth.

it compels me to live a life that is not my own,

for a broken world full of people that i may not ever know,

because it is a love that must be shared.

it is a love that must be known.

i didn’t know you were beautiful

if only because

i didn’t yet know you.