to Paris [locked]
love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear;
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun more last than star
Three months and a year since they met. The anniversary of their first date. They have traveled a long way to be in their City together. It's more than distance in miles. This distance has been measured in pain, hope, trouble, happiness, despair, love, and growth. It has been measured in pie, in kisses, in intimate moments spread out among moments of happiness and pain and every 'ordinary' moment in between. It has been measured in breaking up, comforting, struggling, touching, fighting, trying, and standing on the edge.
Tears have been shed. Blood has been spilled. Pain has ripped through the both of them, together and separately.
She was kidnapped and tortured terribly.
He was a lab rat by his own choice.
She disappeared on the day of the last plagues, and he tried to disappear.
She was drenched in alcohol. The worst nightmare come to life, and they survived it. They persevered. They separated. They grew. They pulled themselves out of the pieces and the wreckage time and time again, and they lived, knowing how painful that living can be... and knowing how beautiful it can be as well.
They were there when the Conrad fell to pieces taking with it hundreds of memories of standing on the roof, sitting in the hallway, and sharing a bed together for the first time, but they were not together when it fell.
One day a margay pushed a cardboard box full of memories across the sidewalk. He took her to his apartment (it only ever became home with her). She sat naked and broken and beautiful wrapped in a blanket.
I don't know how we got here.
Words shared, emotions laid bare, a kiss and it all shifted again, right into place where it was meant to be. After it all, they came together again stronger than ever before. Nothing could tear down what they've made for themselves.
Three months later, they are sharing Paris again.
Hand in hand. One moment at a time.