Valentine

Thirteen years together and romance has become less about surprise and more about knowing exactly which surprise will work. #

Valentine’s Day with Yuri after thirteen years is funny because neither of us can convincingly pretend to be mysterious anymore. He knows which perfume I am wearing before I tell him. I know when he is hiding something because he becomes approximately twelve percent too casual. He knows I will say I don’t need flowers and be happy when flowers appear. I know which look means he wants to leave a crowded place and which means he is perfectly happy standing there saying nothing. This is not the death of romance. I think this is romance after it stops auditioning. We went out. I dressed properly because I enjoy dressing properly and Valentine’s Day is an excellent excuse. Hair, makeup, earrings, a dress that makes me stand straighter, perfume. He looked at me when I came out and gave me that small expression I know so well. «Bambolina.» Still works. Annoying. Dinner was lovely. The private things stay private. Later we walked through cold Amsterdam with my hand tucked into his arm because gloves apparently do not solve everything. We passed couples everywhere, some new enough to be visibly trying, some probably like us, already fluent in one another. I thought about seventeen-year-old me for a second, about December 2001, about how little I understood what staying with someone actually meant. I thought love was mostly intensity then. It is intensity sometimes. It is also remembering what the other person takes in coffee. It is knowing when not to ask. It is moving countries and assembling furniture and surviving bad moods and boring Tuesdays. It is being able to sit in silence without rushing to fill it. It is him bringing water without being asked. It is me knowing where the thing is that he has just lost. It is still wanting to dress beautifully for dinner with somebody who saw you this morning looking like a haunted pillow. We came home, shoes off, coats hung, gifts placed where they belong. I removed my earrings at the mirror and saw him pass behind me. For one second the reflection looked so familiar it almost hurt, not from sadness, just from the sheer amount of time inside it.

Remember me, Eclipse.