A Lover's Epistle

That jade earring and your neck were the first things that caught my eyes.
Then your gate, then your tears, then your email thanking me for noticing your heart aching in the breezeway of our college. You know how fall turns from crisp to wet in a moment in the Pacific Northwest? One day the leaves were golden and the next they were pinned to the ground. My heart fell like that. Dark bars couldn't stay open long enough, and I could've walked from one end of the city to the other just because. The lighting in every room was warm, womb-like. I wanted to crawl inside the nook of your arm, be cradled in your embrace. I resisted for as long as I could, only linking arms once to walk to the bus to return home after a night drinking cocktails with you in a place I'd never been to before. You remember it was named the Virginia Cafe? "Virginia is for lovers" they say.

Hide with me in the stacks of the bookstore; let's walk the aisles of the library in our damp clothes and not look for books, just touch them. I'll pull your scarf around my neck--it's spring green and I won't be able to get rid of it many years later, even though it is stained and chalked-full of dingleberries. Meet me behind the school in the hours of dawn, as if we are teenagers. I can't stay on my friend's couch any longer, and this body feels like its going to explode and my soul is going to race in all directions to reach you. Walk me back to your bed and... let's just sleep.
I want to be anchored by the weight of your arms.

Birds are out the breakfast table window: jays crack open the morning, hummers dive and dip for the sweet nectar you've made. Waves of bushtits flock to the camelias, and I don't notice them because there you are before me, so basic with your breakfast and coffee, getting ready to go to school. You say we can do this and go further than we ever imagined, and I don't believe because no one has told me about the possibilities of knowledge, wisdom, and love. Love is to be mistrusted. Love is impermanent. Love is something you cannot choose to do, it just happens. See? It happened to us. And so we struggle with this because you know it can be built upon, and I am at odds with that idea. If it's too difficult, I think, just get the hell out. I move in, and difficulties befall us almost immediately.

Remember when we broke up and got back together and broke up and got back together and broke up and got back together and... Do you think, as I do, that was part of our process to getting here? The reinforcing of the house we were building was why we could withstand what would come: the stress of different graduate schools, the lovers in between, the many miles between us, the gulf in our hearts, addiction and goddamn cancer. Who would've thought that so many little moments would bring us here, to this beautiful, intangible behemoth we've created.

Take me ten years later to where we are now, on the couch before dawn with our coffee talking about the complexities of the world, our classrooms, our students, and I'll reflect on the many Octobers we will face, the celebrations not only of our birthdays, but our marriage and our survival, and the first time I saw the shape of your neck, that lucky piece of jade hanging from your ear.

Its love.