Time to Say ... I Love You

You say you needed to hear me say it before I could ...

but I wasn't ready.

I felt it though.

You and I had just begun ...

to be an "us."

It seemed so simple then,

before us nary a challenge,

except one: what to say, how to react

when folks mistook us for father and daughter.

Did we ever figure that out?

You know what?

As upsetting at times as it may have seemed ...

I think we revelled in it.

Bold but not unprecedented ...

an older man loves a much younger woman,

but perplexing was how a much younger woman

could love me?

That confounded me, even troubled me at times.

So when you said "I love you" it made me feel special.

It really did!

But I knew something then you may not have known yet.

No fault of your own.

Just a matter of time.

to show you "I love you."

I held those words back because I feared they

might be cheapened if I could not back them up with deeds.

And I wanted to give you only the very best I could because it was

for you, and that meant everything to me and ...

still does.

Because you were ready, but

I was not ...

my words for you I wanted to not utter before it was right,

but like all things for which there comes a time ....

now it is ...

I

love

you.


Alan