On Romance

We share a rather curious, almost perfunctory sort of intimacy together:

we share mundane time.

We eat-and sometimes prepare-meals together; we shop for food together, which we are (in a mild way, admirably) committed to not wasting; we take walks; we sleep side by side most nights; we attend events but we do not discuss these events; we do not talk about the future; we do not traffic in conversation involving our idealism, our aspirations, our hopes, our fears...

We do, however, occasionally mention the details of a dream we've had.

We brush our teeth, we bathe, we dress in concert. We joke and laugh.

You say only a little about your family and I even less about mine.

We scarcely touch upon current events.

We never philosophize.

Yet, within all this-

which is to say, this something which is almost nothing in terms of passion or intellect or vivid experience-

there is a certain earthbound sincerity that I find moving, although it confounds me.

We are as united as two earthworms wriggling together in the soil or two bits of mist clinging to their individual motes of dust in the air, which is to say almost not at all.

Together or apart, we exist.

Together, we are islands who dimly acknowledge that though the depths of an ocean lie between us, even deeper still we are connected.