Together, We Are Everything

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She tries to balance her affection for him with her affection for words, but often they can’t help but intertwine.

He thinks in straight lines and numbers. His mind is a stoic mesh of gridlines with magic bursting at the seams. She was born with an unshakeable thirst for words; to speak, to read and to write them, to consume them and follow the paths they whisper between the pages. He may not say much, but his eyes shine when he sings, and all she hears is honeyed and golden. She melts. The voice of an angel and a talent for the saxophone; a romantic musical inclination to die for.

She can’t sing to save her life, but comes alive under stage lights and memorizes monologues in the shower. She’s not one for fairytales, but she believes in the power of theatre. She spends months redefining herself in various roles, and in doing so, discovering new parts of herself. She’s on an endless mission to grow; getting lost in places that don’t exist and falling in and out of love with figments of a playwright’s imagination. He thinks before he speaks, and he says this is beautiful.

Snowy Sundays are spent on long walks with interlaced fingers through vast expanses of hilly terrain and an occasional gust of bone-chilling wind. He holds her close and promises something warm once they get home. She recites a few lines from her current play for him and he smiles. He reminds her of the promise she made to him: after a couple of drinks at this weekend’s party, she’ll finally reveal her capacity for foreign accents and whip out a New Zealand twang that’ll make him laugh. She tends to speak before she thinks, often landing herself in a clumsy mess.

He looks just as good in sports kit on the field as captain of the football team as he does in a smart suit when collecting numerous awards of recognition on stage. Wherever he is and whatever he’s doing, he’s most likely flashing his winning smile. Polished and smelling lovely or muddy and still smelling just as good, she’s utterly floored. She’ll never tire of hearing the world reminding her how lucky she is to have someone so unparalleled in every context.

She retreats to the dance studio at night to take her mind off everything. She bathes in the piece of choreography she’s been working on, tending to it like a flower garden and watching it bloom as the music swells on the scratchy stereo. She hates sport, but breaks a sweat through leaps and turns. Her blistered feet are her battle wounds, because the strongest people she’s ever met are all dancers. She writes profusely, reads endlessly and tries to balance her affection for him with her affection for words, but often they can’t help but intertwine.

A writer chronicling a romance with an engineer.

At the beginning, she told him about her favorite quote: “If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.”

He knows that every moment they share holds the possibility of being solidified for eternity: tattooed with the ink of a pen, printer or typewriter.

Through her intensity, he remains gentle.

He’s numbers, she’s words.

He’s music to your ears, she’s movement for your eyes.

But this I feel in my bones: that together, they are everything.