keep your humor

I fear every day this man isn't going to give me what I want, and yet I cannot let it go. I can't be the one to walk away, only he can do that. I can't bear the thought of giving up one single second he'd give me.

I think of this distance between us — twenty one years. I have reverence for this time, it is not inconsequential to me. I want so badly for us to submit to this difference and move through life as partners. I can't dismiss his fears, I know that twenty one years means twenty one less years, I have thought about it daily and yet I want it all the same. I am not a woman tied to convention, there is nothing he could deny me that I have not already given up of my own accord.

I think of him often. I like to imagine his life ten, fifteen years ago. I know he was happier than he is now, and I wish for his comfort that reality was still there.

I wonder if we ever crossed paths in this city. I imagine him holding a door open for me and me bashfully thanking him as I would have any attractive man in my early twenties. I imagine bumping into him at a busy bar while closing my tab and him making me laugh with some joking comment like he makes to strangers in my presence now. Do you think we ever spotted each other across a grocery store parking lot, or sat back to back in a restaurant, or side by side in traffic? These are my favorite places to visit. A testament to my desire for him, making up a fictitious history that I wish were drawn from real memory.

I would give anything to be ten years older or have him ten years younger - is that a sign he's right? I love him as he is, so I feel more like this desperate desire stems from his hesitancy, not mine.

He is a prayer, he is a mirror, he is unlike any man I've ever known. He notices everything, like I do. He notices and he gives his opinion. I love it - it keeps me on my toes, it makes me want to behave, it makes me want to follow through. He is so singular to me and yet so complementary. He is meticulous to a fault, something I understand so deeply.

I will continue to indulge him for as long as he allows me, and I hope he allows me to for the rest of his life.