Dear Nazareth
You're in the kitchen with Ian.
I can see the light through the open doors from here. Your shape moving through it. The low sound of your voice carrying across the terrace and dissolving into the dark before it reaches me.
I'm sitting at the edge of this pool with my feet in the water and this diary on my knees, and I feel something I haven't felt in so long.
Still.
You're here.
Twenty feet away.
I can hear your voice. Low and even and completely yours.
Ian says something, and there's a pause, and then you say something back and I can't make out the words and it doesn't matter. It has never mattered less.
I don’t know why I’m out here instead of in there with you, writing to you while you’re twenty feet away.
Maybe because I've been writing to you in your absence for so long that I needed to do it once with you close.
To feel the difference.
The difference is everything.
I missed you.
Not just your hands or your mouth or the weight of you beside me.
The ordinary of you.
The sound of you in the next room. The knowledge that if I walked through that door, you'd look up.
That you'd know it was me before I said a word.
I have no idea how long this will last.
But tonight, you're here and the water is warm and the moon is out and Ian is burning something that smells like garlic and I can hear your voice through the open door.
Tonight, that's everything.