my bags are packed, i’m ready to go…
i remember a rough patch, a month back, when i flipped through a calendar and counted something with a sickening four in the end result. i couldn’t imagine how i’d get through forty something days and forty something nights.
and here i am, after a refreshing weekend at home with my family, looking at only three more lonely nights in my bed and one long night on a plane. on wednesday night, i will kiss my parents goodbye at the airport and set across the ocean, holding nothing but a well-packed carry-on, a purse, and my heart. i will speed through the night over the vast ocean towards england, a pilgrim in reverse, to finally be folded safely in stuart’s arms again.
week after week, we have toasted each other on separate sides of this damned ocean, proud of each other, proud of what we have, proud of making it through another week smiling. i won’t say i haven’t cried. the other night, i barely held it together when a friend sang the song that titles this entry, simply because i knew that after five precious days, i will have to be dragged back over this ocean by customs officials and a plan i know is right.
but right now, i’m not thinking about another terribly painful moment in another unfeeling airport. i’m thinking about mornings finally spent waking up next to the most beautiful person i know. i’m thinking about sunny afternoons in a garden on an island. i’m thinking about a train speeding through bucolic countryside, curled up together and making plans. i’m thinking about being in a crowded bar with dear friends old and new, and seeing stuart across the room and smiling.
i’m thinking, too, about the frightening dichotomy of these airports – how that arrivals hall at heathrow will seem like the sunniest, most glorious place in the world, four mornings from now.
dreams about days to come,
when i won’t have to be alone,
about the times that i won’t have to say,
oh, kiss me and smile for me
tell me that you’ll wait for me
hold me like you’ll never let me go…

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