Page 352 of Face Off

Yes, Ryan. I am still yours.

I never stopped being yours, but I now understand that loving you doesn’t make your body, decisions, forgiveness, or future mine to control. Being yours never made you responsible for keeping me whole.

I’m not asking whether you are still mine. I haven’t earned the right to hear that answer, and I won’t use your love as proof that the work is finished.

I will say that if you still want me when I reach you, I will choose you out loud for the rest of my life.

Charm

His response doesn’t arrive as a letter.

A box appears outside my apartment containing three poetry books. John Donne. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Amy Lowell.

A letter rests across the top.

Charm,

The answer is yes.

It has been yes in Michigan, Milwaukee, every silent apartment, and every bed where I discovered another person’s body couldn’t touch the place you occupy.

Don’t mistake that truth for complete trust or a decision I haven’t made. I’m answering because you gave me something honest, and you deserve the same.

I am still yours.

Now the books.

Read Donne when distance starts feeling like proof that love is ending. Read Browning when certainty annoys you. Read Lowell because “The Taxi” has apparently become my emotional trauma. You asked me once what was worse, death or living.

Living while loving you 392 miles away is a hell I didn’t know existed.

I marked nothing. I want to know which words find you without me guiding your interpretation.

Tell me what you think.

Ryan

I read every book.

I write in a notebook beside me because Ryan asked what I think, and for the first time, I don’t search for someone else’s interpretation before trusting my own. I argue with Donne, cry over Browning, and tell Lowell she remains personally responsible for too much of my suffering.

Then I write to Ryan.

Ryan,

Donne thinks distance stretches love without breaking it. I wanted to call that romantic bullshit until I realized we have spent months proving him right.

Browning writes as though love can be counted through every part of a person’s existence. I don’t think love becomes powerful because it is infinite. I think it becomes powerful when someone knows exactly what loving another person costs and chooses to love them honestly anyway.

Lowell can still go fuck herself.

“The Taxi” feels different now. The person is still being carried away, and the world remains cruel enough to continue around her. The difference is that I no longer believe distance only moves in one direction.

A road capable of carrying someone away can bring them back.

I know that might sound like hope trying to become a promise. It isn’t. You asked what I think, and that is my interpretation.

I think roads work both ways.