1973

My love and I are two imaginary people. We lie together under the invented skies of a make-believe world, hold each other closely and struggle to imagine the enormity of what we have just done.

The enormity is this: that from all others on the planet we have found each other by little more than blind luck, and have also found that we are entirely compatible with each other and have no issues or arguments to keep us apart, and that we have shared our minds, our souls and our bodies and have both been left reeling by the results.

The truth is this: that neither of us matter one real jot within the broader scope of things, and that we are two tiny and forgettable creatures holding onto each other on the surface of an insignificant piece of rock revolving around an average star in an unremarkable cloud of millions of others.

But the perception is this: that none of the reality matters because the only thing we have is this feeling for each other and the space within our heads that admits the rest of the universe. And that the rest of the universe can be forgotten for now, because the only thing I have in my head is a feeling of joy, that the only sound in my head is the sound of your heart beating, and that there is nothing else in the universe that can possibly matter as much as this.

My love and I are two imaginary people. We lie on the man-made grass feeling the warmth from each of our bodies and look upwards to the night skies and witness the colossal and ancient blanket of the circling constellations above and beyond us. We know what we are, and where we are, and how we fit into everything around us. One day we will both be dead and forgotten, and the rest of this strange mechanism called reality will function without us as it always has.

But that day is not here yet. Let me place my head on your chest once more and listen to the simple instrument moving within you that tells me that we are still together, and that everything is good, and right, and just and wonderful.