a small bouquet of amaranths

Certain words come with sound bytes in my head, like a sort of metaphysical onomatopoeia. For example, when I hear the word year, a clip plays in my head that sounds monumentally heavy and gravelly, like a monolithic stone being dragged slowly and purposefully across cement.

And that's certainly how it felt, two years ago. Massive and unconquerable. And now, three days to go, and all of that is gone - it's weightless. Surprisingly so. The stone is removed. The baby is borne - no memory of the pain. Nothing is left but relief and joy and the next chapter.

I'm sure this will all change and I'll pass through every degree on the spectrum of levity to gravity again before I see him.

Part of it may be that he's always been deeply calming to me. I used to go to him in the evening the way some people go to wine after dinner. He completed the day. A friend of mine once aptly described love as an inside joke in which you never have to share the punchline. We had that. And we've kept it alive by post for two years.

So while part of me is freaking out like Thumper, part of me is breathing him in already, relaxing at the thought of him. That's the way romance ought to be, yeah? Frantic and peaceful.