Loving You Means I Will Never Settle

Around the time I graduated from safety scissors, I began to clip newspaper photographs of far away places to decoupage the walls of my sunny childhood room and fill the bellies of shoeboxes to the brim. I gathered pages and postcards, stacked my shelves with stories, and scribbled lustful lists of explorations.

I dreamt of wandering the world and filled each day with an ardent hope that I still hold. I want to meet every heart on this great green earth, collect cities to fill the frames on my mantle and fill my mind with memories of misadventure.

The shoeboxes have now lived years in an attic alcove. I have a passport with cluttered pages. I have had handfuls upon handfuls of adventures. Most wonderfully, I have found you.

I have, also, never let my wanderlust go. There is so much left to be explored and so many adventures still to be embarked upon.

We instead have decided from the cardinal moment to step off of that path and journey into the woods.

The world had never felt so large and promising as the moment we first locked eyes. The improbability of our introduction, the satiation of the once implacable knowledge that you existed—it was as if the continents culminated and state-lines finally surrendered to allow our apocalyptic appointment.

A collision is ordinarily where two things come to rest following a significant interaction. But we are a nuclear encounter on some distant star. We will continue to continue and our love is a light.

You make me feel like filling a box with maps and photographs, and a mason jar with spare pennies until they evolve into plane tickets and miles in an airstream—because no matter where we go or what we do, we’re right where we are supposed to be.

You make me want to not only see the seven wonders of the world together, but go on to name the eighth and ninth.

With you, everything and every day is an adventure.

Let’s go explore.