I am thankful for your magic. I am thankful for the way you look at me. The way your fingers feel when they caress my face. I am thankful for your heart. For the way it makes your body glow, beating, living, breathing inside of your rib cage, dying to burst out. When you press your chest up against mine, I am thankful for the way our breath falls into sync. It is primordial. Ancient. Sacred.

I am thankful for you. I am thankful for her. I am thankful for him. I am thankful for the way my mother raised me—to be kind, to be patient, to be wild, to have faith and to be hopeful that everything is working out. Yes, it’s working out. Because sitting right here, right now, what you may be thinking is your heart has such a long way to go. Yeah maybe, maybe.

But maybe it’s all good. Maybe yeah, you’ve still got such a fucking mountain to climb, but so what? Right now, you’re at the base and you have everybody cheering you on. Everybody here is holding a banner with your name on it, saying you’re going to make it the summit. You’re gonna make it to the top.

I am thankful for knowing how to love. For wanting to love, despite all of the times I have stroked the face of love with nothing but compassion and trust, only to have it bite my hand. I am thankful for knowing you. And I mean, knowing you, every inch of you, and the way that knowing you in that way is unique. Unique to any other way than any other person will ever know you, until your bones have gone from this earth.

I am thankful for the revolutionaries. The ones braver, stronger than me. The ones who look at me and lift me up, knowing that I am capable of more and push me to be more. I love you for saying what the world could be and having what it takes to make it happen. You inspire me. I am thankful to be human on this planet we call Earth, and to be surrounded by the entire Universe, to be able to know exactly what that means but also at a loss to understand. To know that it is magic, it is wonder, because magic never died. Magic is all around us. It is the way I feel when I lock eyes with a stranger that somehow I already know, somehow I’ve seen, time, and time again.

So, thank you for being a part of all of this. For being human, for being credible, unique, caring and kind. Thank you for being unforgettable and irreplaceable.

And if nobody’s told you yet today, I love you. I love you. You have changed my life.