Life tells you to take the elevator, but love tells you to take the stairs.

You leave the phone on beside you as you fall asleep. I sit in my bed and listen to your breathing, until I know you are safe, until I know you no longer need me for the night.

We always loved to say 'If I'd had a Monday-morning class, I never would have met you'. Or 'If you'd been reading something else, none of this would have happened'. We didn't believe in fate, but we believed in serendipity. We felt very lucky.

That no matter what i did, I would always be missing something else. And the only way to live, the only way to be happy, was to make sure the things I didn't miss meant more to me than the things I missed.

I am starting to get tired of relying on words. They are full of meaning, yes, but they lack sensation. Writing to her is not the same as seeing her face as she listens. hearing back from her is not the same as hearing her voice. I have always been grateful for technology, but now it feels as if there's a little hitch of separation woven into any digital interaction. I want to be there, and this scares me. All my usual disconnected comforts are bieng taken away, now that I see the greater comfort of presence.

I had forgotten this about love: how the simple things- the turn away, the turn towards- could be so complicated, and how the complicated things- the stolen night, the right words- could be so simple.

That lasting things do, in fact, last.