And out of all these things I've done, I think I love you better now

Ola, chicas!

Almost three years ago, I wrote about how my fairy tale would go.

Here's how the love story went for real.

Once upon a time...

"When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible."

-Johnathan Safran Froer

My lover asks me:
“What is the difference between me and the sky?”
The difference, my love,
Is that when you laugh,
I forget about the sky.

-Nizar Qabbani

It’s always surprising, this sense
of relief. When you kiss me
unexpectedly, I’m reminded of
the time I left a shoe-box containing
ten or eleven thousand dollars on a
coffee table in a hotel lobby in Northern Italy.
I was between floors in the elevator,
staring at my reflection knowing something
was missing when I remembered what was,
and pushed every button and rolled through
the doors, sprinted hallways in search of the
universal symbol for stairs, barreled
down six flights, and found it
waiting there, untouched,
and haloed by the light
of late-afternoon.

-John K. Samson, 'Everything Will Be Okay'

~

"Dear Joe,

If I can only succeed in making you happy - I will have succeeded in the biggest and most difficult thing there is - that is to make one person completely happy. Your happiness means my happiness."

-A letter from Marilyn Monroe to her ex-husband, found a week after her death.

But what about when your one person isn't completely happy all the time? What then?

Someone once told me that love
is winning the lottery
but losing the ticket.

-Gregory Sherl

And it's dark in a cold December
But I've got you to keep me warm
If you're broken, I will mend ya
And I'll keep you sheltered from the storm that's raging on

I'm out of touch, I'm out of love
I'll pick you up when you're getting down
And out of all these things I've done
I think I love you better now

I'm out of sight, I'm out of mind
I'll do it all for you in time
And out of all these things I've done
I think I love you better now

-Ed Sheeran

"And I swear I grew like a flower every hour of the fifty years I was with you – and that’s not to say we didn’t have bad days. But when morning came, you were laughing. Yeah, there were times we were both half-in and half out the door but I never needed more than the stars of your grin to lead me home... We are paint on a slick canvas – it’s gonna take a whole lot to stick but if we do, we’ll be a masterpiece. On nights you couldn’t sleep, I’d lay awake for hours counting sheep for you and you would rewrite the rhythm of my heartbeat with the way you held me in the morning, resting your head on my chest and I swear my breath turned silver the day your hair did, like I swore marigolds grew in the folds of my eyelids the first time I saw you and they bloomed the first time I watched you dance to the tune of our kitchen kettle in our living room in a world that could have left us hard as metal, we were soft as nostalgia together. For fifty years, we feathered wings too wide to be prey and we flew through days strong and through days fragile as sand-castles at high tide and you would fold your love into an origami firefly and you’d throw it through my passageways until all my hidden chambers were filled with lanterns, now, every trap door, every pore of my heart is open because of you – because of us.”

-Andrea Gibson

Baby, I have no idea how this will end

Maybe the equator will fall like a hula hoop from the earth’s hips

And our mouths will freeze mid-kiss on our 80th anniversary

Or maybe tomorrow, my absolute insanity

Combined with the absolute obstacle course of your communication skills

Will leave us

Like a love letter

In a landfill

But whatever

Whenever

However this ends...

I want you to know, that right now,

I love you forever

I love you for the hardest mile we walked together

For the night I collected every sharp knife in the house

And threw them one by one on the roof

Then told the sun,

Listen show off,

From now on, you are only to give me blades of grass;

Things that are growing and soft...

Do you know, the night you told me you had a crush on my ears,

I swore to never to become Van Gogh

And look, baby,

They are both still there

Just like my firefly heart is still right there in your glass jar

I never trusted anybody more to poke enough holes in the lid...

You will never lose me to the wind

You are the lightning that made me fill my chest with candles

You are the thunder clapping for the poem that nobody else wants to hear

You are an icicle’s tear watering a tulip on the first day of spring

You melt me alive

You kiss me as deep as my roots will reach

And I want nothing more than to be an eyelash fallen on your cheek

Then being collected by your fingers

And held like a wish

I promise

That whatever I do

I will always try my best

To come true

-Andrea Gibson

Love, unsent letters and Lego blocks xxx