How will I know?

Do I really make your heart
leap?
Into an oblivion of love
where only tenderness
has any meaning?
Do you dream of ways
to show me
the love you know exists within your heart?
Words are not eternal;
ephemeral shadows on a wall of meaning
a fleeting whisper once heard
then gone.
If sounds of love were lost in the spirals of my ear,
looks of love wasted on the windows to the soul with shutters down.
What then?
How would I know that love was beating the rhythm of your being?
Would you trace the very words upon my flesh?
I would believe my skin to be the pages of desire that
you tear from some greater volume.
It would be there for all to see, and yet I could not.
Would you lead me through a woodland floor, tracing in
my steps the scent of bluebells so that I would be
breathing in your boundless love?
Would you lead my hands to sands that are washed by waves of salt with the constancy of the moon?
So like each grain, no matter what pattern formed, I would know?
Or simply that you are here each day when I wake,
you exist beside me no matter what patterns my tears trace?
That I can forget, almost, the time when I did not know
your face, when you were held by another's arms and did not know mine?
Even though your words are not eternal, do not leave a
page that I can turn.
I see no wooded floor, nor can I smell the scent of a
thousand cobalt chimes.
And each grain of sand slips through my careless fingers
to be tracked by salty traces.
I have to to believe in you
for how else
will I know?