5 Things I Miss Most About Traveling With You

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I miss having all the time in the world to read beautiful books on beautiful beaches while you sat beside me playing beautiful music. You would pause every few minutes and look in my direction. I could feel your eyes on me and I loved that they were there; I would wait for you to go back to strumming before I finally let me smile run free and glanced back at you. When the beads of sweat rolling off the tips of our noses started arriving in herds, we looked toward the sparkling blanket of ocean that lay before our feet. I miss having to run across the sand because it was so hot and we were certain we were getting third-degree burns on the soles of our feet. I miss the out-of-breath screaming and the laughing and the falling overtop of one another when we finally reached the water. I miss wrapping my legs around your waist while you carried me through the waves because my feet couldn’t touch the bottom and open water gives me bad butterflies. I miss holding hands while we floated on our backs so that nothing from the gentle rises and falls to the crashing of the waves could pull us apart. Because even after being together everyday for a month, we never wanted to be too far apart.

I miss doing all the things we loved and all the things we wanted to do and being able to do them together. I miss sharing every moment, all the highs and too-real lows that come with traveling to the other side of the world: breathtaking ocean-views and dirty, blistered feet; beautiful architecture and sweaty everything; succulent food and sorry stomachs. I miss all the talking and all the comfortable silences; the hundreds of games of Uno and watching you read maps. I miss watching for the look of wonder on your face every time we crossed a street, drove through forests, pulled into a different city. Everything was so new and beautiful to you and I felt so fortunate to a part of the scenery I know you try so hard to keep in your memory months later.

I miss hearing you ask for bottle caps for new beers at restaurants and I miss how embarrassing it felt to be using so many hand gestures while we spoke to locals. I miss biking to the beach and browsing through bookstores and walking until our feet were sore and we were dripping with sweat and a little bit grumpy and just wanted to sit down somewhere, anywhere to have at least 4 slices of pizza. I miss getting caught in rainstorms together and letting the rain soak through our clothes and kissing while people ran past us looking for shelter because it felt like we were in a movie and I’ve always felt like our love is like the best kind of movie love.

I miss making new memories in a country so different from our own and holding hands more often than we weren’t and not having to go more than a few minutes without you looking at me the way you do. I miss always kissing each other’s damp, salty faces without caring that they were damp and salty. I miss the way our legs were pretzeled together evening after evening without fail and the way the early morning sunlight hugged your cheek before I leaned in to place my lips in its warmth. I miss feeling like it was only you and I and like the world was ours for the taking and like real life would never feel bad again because we had these lights like lanterns to unfold in times of darkness.

I hope these little memories float toward you like pieces of flickering light. I hope they offer a little warmth in this cold and I hope they replace the gloomy feelings that sometimes make a home in you before you go to sleep at night. I hope they remind you of those sun-kissed days on our favourite beach, when everything felt so simple and there was nothing but the sounds of waves crashing while we pressed our salty lips together and whispered iloveyous into the ocean breeze.