I want to write to you about love.

Tonight, I watched a plane go by, imagining strangers in their fixed chairs staring out at familiar and unfamiliar landscapes from airspace. I got thinking that perhaps love is quite like that too: both coming home and going somewhere. I used to be a little apprehensive of love, I think, sensing that I might become jaded or stuck or cynical. But I feel as if knowing one another is endless. The one to be known only grows with the knowing.

I’ve been feeling so deeply these past few months. Light touches on my skin, whether from the cloth of my dress, the soft breeze or your close embrace – I feel them more –intensely? More powerfully? More meaningfully? I don’t quite know, – but I am quite sure I feel more.

Hearing my grandfather stumble saying my name, my grandmother curious how my trip to Canada - three years later. I’m so deeply fearful of forgetting. Perhaps my meticulous documenting is some sort of attempt at remedying this - through my photographs or my writing or the scars on my body, I hope they make these feelings remain. I wrote this letter for me, in an attempt to tighten my grip on these memories- but maybe one day I’ll let you read it too.

It’s so peculiar to me the way that love is all over and around us, unnamed, unsaid.
We talk so often of such insignificant things that we love – I love our regular customers, I love coffee, Indian food, sunset swims, dancing in big kitchens, holding hands, the light that streams through my window, my favourite pink knitted jumper, bumble bee cab sav… and you.

You know my adoration of these things, and you know you have a place on this list of things I love, but I haven’t told you just yet. I’ve settled for telling you I adore you. I’m crazy about you, I like you so much, I’m grateful for you, I’m proud of you, I made you lunch, I saw this and thought of you, do you want this beer, I found you a rice cooker, sleep well, did you have a good day, did you get home safe?

And as for you, whether or not you love me, I feel deeply and sincerely seen by you. You tell me you know me in the way your gaze falls on me, your forehead kisses, your vegan diet attempts, your sacrifices of sleep. The way you listen and you try to understand even when you can’t.

When you said you felt energy in your fingertips that day, I felt love in them. The love, it mended the thin white lines on my thighs, and it freed me of fear.
You feel like a moment of understanding, like finding the stairs in the dark and I can’t help but wonder, why is everything so easy when I’m with you?
You love chopping firewood, my dad’s beanie, the cat that sits on the steps by my house, peanut butter, the wok I bought you, the card I wrote you, oranges, Sundays, bushwalks, plants, your new home…

And this is why it’s so peculiar to me the way we tiptoe around this love for each other when we share so much love for this life.

Here is an unfinished, inadequate list of times I knew I loved you

- This morning when you kissed me, asleep, right in the eye.

- When we watched the sunset at Tascot and you noticed a tiny red spider on my shoulder. You had an ant on your other hand and you urged them to be friends.

- The day you moved into your own place and you helped me clean at mine for over an hour.

- At Tascot again when we laughed until we cried about how nothing sums everything up quite like nice does.

- When you ran, and continue to run, into the freezing cold ocean after me.

- That night we were dropping people home after an evening at yours and you played Beyond by Leon Bridges and we locked eyes for a few moments and I was scared to death that this might be it.

- When you tenderly packed all the plants you own and they filled the ute.

- When you tap me like a child would to alert me to something beautiful you see.

- When you noticed a tiny little dot in my eye that we both share.

- When you said we’d had such a nice day near north head you forgot all about the pandemic for a moment

- When we got so very lost in each other that night at Elias’

- When we woke up on Sunday morning and you were looking at me different, and through your eyes I saw the softness and gentleness with which you view me.

- When you let me hug you at the snow even though it made you soaking wet.

- When we pulled the blankets over our head and you said, “this feels important, tell me a secret.” I almost told you I loved you then.

- The feeling of peace and rootedness that I couldn’t explain another Sunday morning we sat on the futon on the veranda outside, a tangle of arms and legs.

- When we sat at Mackillop as the wind shook the car and you asked what those lyrics were that you missed – they were “falling deep, deep in love with you.” I couldn’t bring myself to say them.


- When you dance



Sending bright light,