the anatomy of our love

at some point, long distance love hurts more than it doesn’t. but you’ll remember that one day you get to see them, and that would be enough to help you live for the time being. in the end, it’ll always be worth it if it’s for you. this is for, and about my beloved Elmo Austino. may our love melt distance, however far you are.

I love how your eyelids flutter when you sleep. I read your dreams through hour unmoved face and call your name until you smile. your lips curving into the shape of my whole world.

They say it’s easier to love from a distance, sometimes. maybe part of me believes that we wouldn’t have fallen in love if the plane didn’t take you away. Going away reminded you to text me back again after that blip of fling we had in January, even if it was only a week away, and there was no time to spare for a quick meet. Timing has never been our forte, isn’t it? I was sad you had to leave but I never regretted falling in love with you. Not even when it’s hard, or the signal’s bad, or your roommates are loud.

It’s hard to build a body out of words, Sarah Kay once said, I told you she was my favorite poet two weeks into the intense talking. I told you way too many things in two weeks, things that usually send people running or kill them into a ghost. But you tell me of your ghosts, and skeletons, your bruises - and why you spent the pandemic locking yourself out from your friends. Then I realized we have made a living body out of something that should have been impossible. The anatomy of our love is still something I dissect every night, wondering if it’s supposed to be this easy.

I love how you smile with your eyes. Every time I tell you to smile they lit up even though your mouth says “you know I can’t smile”, then you proceed to conjure a smile that could kill me if it tried, and I’ll die happy.

It’s not fair that I know the way you look when you sleep and all of your dreams, and the accidents you never tell your mom about, or why you were never really that comfortable pursuing your major and that’s why your dad let you move. I know what your little brother texted you when you landed that made you cry. Because I have been here since you were trying to make sense of a new country until how you are now a few alphabets away from being fluent in Turkish. I know what breaks your heart and what silly things you did with your high school best friend and where the best spot to see the sunrise in Bandung is and how much you miss that city and your friends, but you never know how to tell them so I tell you how until you finally give them a call.

I know you. You are real. I have lived a life with you.

It’s not fair that those who can spend time with you are those who barely know you and I’m holed up in Jakarta, always praying for your return.

I love how the only way I have seen you so clear and real without a shit signal is when I dream of you. But that’s never going to be enough though is it?

You should be here and pick me up from my house and shake hands with my dad and eat my mom’s food and talk about games with my brother and meet my best friends for their nod of approval and drink my favorite coffee in this whole wide city and mark the spots with I love yous and freeze my memory every time you glance a look at me. And I’ll be able to hold your hand.

I love when you understand my jokes and when you look at me like I’m the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen (and according to you, I am) and I love when you tell me you’ll come home soon enough, even when I know it’s not that true.

We have built a body out of words and inside jokes, and solving quests in our little game, and (as of now) the 476 ‘i love u’ messages, and out of staring into our screens until we crack a vein. Now I just need you to come home to it.

please?

love, yours