Tonight, two girls boarded two planes headed for two boys in two states. One couple is engaged to be married. The other is split up. And yet perhaps the “broken” couple is just as close as the other.

I thought of these two girls as I drove home tonight. Their excitement, their true emotions, and the way their relationships have unfolded these past few years. How is it that they have moved along such separate but parallel paths?

It’s as if they are both walking along the same river, but on opposite sides.

Partnership

It’s not a fairytale, exactly, but maybe it’s better. Maybe it’s the real thing.

Allow me to present a wonderful excerpt from a wonderful post by a wonderful person.

being in a relationship has a state of permanence- can’t i base my falling in love on a moment-by-moment basis? by labeling you “boyfriend” and me “girlfriend, we have placed each other in roles that demand (by rules of society) that we are faithful to our relationship during every moment that we are officially calling ourselves a couple. faithful not just physically, but in everything we do and how everyone describes you as mine and me as yours. i want, instead, to tell you that in this moment, i am in love with you. the next moment doesn’t matter, and the moment before it might not either. i just want you to hold this moment and know how i feel about you right now.

351 words

Ama looked at my cousins. “Too skinny.
But Maggie,” she said. “Maggie is just right.”
I smiled, because I was hai hao, good enough, and more,
here on this little island in the Pacific, where heat
oppressed and sweat stuck my brown hair to my face.
This is where I say and mean, wo ai ni.

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344 words

Today you have been with me. I have seen your face, heard your voice, felt your touch. Yes, though you are far, in body and in spirit, today you have been with me.

When I woke this morning, I didn’t really wake. I lay in bed in that precarious state of half-sleep, and my mind drifted. My mind drifted, and it found you. You, lying next to me. You, with your arm around my waist. You, breathing on my neck. When I woke this morning, I was not alone. You were there with me.

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