mostly nonsense

CXCVI.

It should scare me, loving you after all this time. It should make me uncomfortable; I should be itching in my skin to lash out, push you away, loosen ever-slightly the hold you have on me. I should be unnerved when, at the end of a long and already perfectly wonderful (content-able, enjoyable, perfectly-fine-by-myself-thank-you-very-much) day, I talk to you, and things, somehow, unexpectedly, get even better.

 Who knows where we’ll be in six months, a year, ten years - maybe right where we are now, holding onto soap bubbles of joy that pop as soon as we try to touch. Maybe we’ll be strangers on the same side of the planet, and we’ll pass each other without realizing it, a strange illusion out of the corner of an eye. Maybe, we’ll be together, and I’ll take you by the hand on the shores of the lake, watch the waves bounce the skyline back to your skin.

It’s where we are today that should frighten me: that so many accidents had to happen to get from there to here, that so many seemingly arbitrary choices would turn out to change my life forever - like staying in on a Wednesday night or laughing out loud at a joke no one else heard. It should be terrifying, but instead, I think of you and grin in public places,

because I’m pretty sure
you love me, too.