My Dearest Y.,

I began speaking to someone again recently, someone I love, and we began talking about, of course, love, and the absence of love, and love’s many missteps and many, many other things, too.  We’d lost years but also not a single moment.

As I drove around later in the weekend, I began reflecting on some of the topics and details of our recent conversations, and quickly, a very clear thought began to form in my mind, like multiple clouds converging into one.

Most people, I thought, fall in love with another person as if they were a beautiful street in a foreign city — a sudden delight — a world unto itself, filled with every amusement, every pleasure, an answer for every desire. Its length, though finite, seems endless.

Only later do they learn that the street is connected to other streets, a village or town, a county or region — a whole, confounding country.  It changes how they see the street; it changes everything.  They don’t know where they stand anymore.

Immediately, I thought, people should fall in love with another person as if they were a country, instead: a country containing regions — cities and towns and villages — lit metropoli and vacant fields, both, everything imaginable.

This country, this beloved, they could endlessly discover, lose themselves in — find themselves in again — and never cease to unearth wonder in; yet all the while the source of this joy would remain their beloved.

I fell in love with you this way — I love you this way — I want to love you this way. Will you love me this way, too?

Tout, toujours, — E.