A Letter To A Distant Love
The sun rises over a London garden while the moonlight illuminates a Texan evening as we say “goodnight” once more. Luckily, time differences have little influence – six hours behind, six hours ahead, none of that matters with an acclimatised sleeping pattern, helping us get the most out of the time we both spend awake while on opposite sides of an infinitely small, blue planet.
We spend weeks together, inseparable, ecstatic, in love, followed by months of isolated distance. Our body rhythms sync up perfectly and then are forced apart until the day they are allowed to feel each other’s presence again. “We’ll be together again soon,” we say, through tidal waves in our eyes and earthquakes in our hearts.
We’ve each entered the other’s world, nine hour journeys over the Atlantic Ocean are our cure for isolation. A Texan heart in London and an English heart in Texas are a now common sighting if you look close enough through international embraces. And then as quickly as we’re together, we’re pulled apart again.
So months pass as I sit here on this double-decker bus, a crimson time capsule of our summer together, travelling the same streets of London that I showed you, reading your favourite William Boyd novels, trying to keep as much of you as I can with me while we’re apart.
I know more about you than I do anyone else. I marvel at your rich, passionate, wonderful personality every time we speak again through our daily phone calls and text messages every few minutes. I understand you on a level I wouldn’t have been able to comprehend before we crossed paths. I crave you. I miss you. And I love you.
I showed you my world and you showed me yours. We gave each other parts of ourselves that will always be with us – permanent tattoos printed on our souls.
Soccer matches from her, wrestling events from him.
Beyoncé from her, Slipknot from him.
Lord of the Rings from her, Star Wars from him.
Matching silver rings on an index finger from both.
The words “I love you” are said thousands of times daily. We contribute to this is by having our hearts scream those three words across the planet until we are able to whisper them in each other’s ears once more.