06102019. You asked me my favorite part of this trip, and I didn’t have an answer. At least, not yet. Because I couldn’t put words to emotion. A day walking along the river, tinnies in hand and you on the phone. Two friends on a bench in a city of nearly nine million. Our love could have swallowed them whole. Fiery sunset and pouring rain. Laughing and screaming as we ran for cover and watched storm clouds pass. Droplets falling down hair, streaming onto our faces, I wanted to capture that moment forever.
Memories of trauma. Silence except for the screaming of metal against metal on the underground. Your arms around me.
Foreheard to forehead, lips to cheeks, arms around each other. Legs and arms intertwined, your tears or mine falling across our laps, I wasn’t sure. My heart burst open with emotion, with gratitude, with acceptance, with love, with immeasurable sadness and pain. Here with you, bodies anchored against a world unimaginable.
Living room couch until 4am, sun rising to greet us, birds chirping for us to sleep. So many hours and still never enough.
Walking to the station, my bag jumping at every crack in the road, every brick-paved stretch of sidewalk. “There’s something about you. You make me feel like I can do anything. Like everything is possible.” My heart caught in my throat. This feeling is what cliches are made of.