what if you were already two years into your degree when i got there and i was nervous and shy but you'd gotten used to being independent, and despite all the years of sibling squabbles you took me under your wing and helped me learn how to navigate the world away from home, and when your dormmate transferred a month into the semester you were able to convince the housing office to let me move to your dorm.
what if you'd already been through your first few relationships, but i was struggling to get my footing, so you decided to help me out. to teach me a few things. and things got... a little out of hand. How one night you made a joke about teaching me how to kiss. How i didn't realize you were joking, how i leaned in and timidly parted my lips, and how you realized you weren't joking either. how i melted into you that night. how our lives changed.
what if you graduated two years later, and got an apartment near campus, and i moved in with you? what if i made you breakfast each morning before you headed to work, and i headed out to my classes? thinking about you as i walked across campus. you thinking of me as you devoured that egg sandwich on your way to your job. both of us missing each other already.
what if i graduated, and got a job too, and after a few years we could finally afford a house. It's small, and needs some work, but we work on it on the weekends, we fix things up, we paint, we garden, we make little things, little decorations. we make the kind of things that only two people who share a lifetime of memories together can make.
what if our parents interrogate us every holiday, every time we go home, about why we're not dating anyone. about why we still live together. about why we don't live our own lives. what if we realize that place isn't really our home anymore. that we have a new one now. that this place is just a house, that these people aren't our family.
what if our friends knew, but didn't care. more then that, they understand. they think it's beautiful. they're just happy that we're happy, together.
what if we got married. not officially, of course, but we have a little ceremony, in the garden. just us. just our friends. just the people who understand. and it's beautiful.
what if we go through life, grow up, grow old, and become increasingly a single unit, a single entity of shared memory and shared love that may disagree with itself, may struggle to understand, but is still always, ultimately, one? what if we live our lives together?
