20/90, my back is dry

My back is dry in a place I can't reach, and I add this to the reasons that I wish Joe were here. I count the days since the last time I shaved, and I'm glad he isn't.

We counted the days until school ends, and we nearly two weeks of being with each other. There are now 71. I said, "It is like Christmas," and this is true, because at Christmas we are together.

It wasn't always like this. We had a year and a half together, almost, with the exception of the summer in between. So it goes in college relationships. And then I left. I went to France, and we talked, actually heard each others' voices--four times in three months.

I wonder how we made it. Because now that Joe is in St. Louis and I am in Muncie and we live our lives for that one weekend a month, I feel like I am not making it. Like I'm treading and slipping at times, especially the times we are in lately.

Then he reminds me that we are floating beautifully along. We are sailing, maybe. We are suspended, stuckin a stop-motion animation, waiting for the frame when we touch each other. We can see it now; our hands are posed. Each weekend we have together is surreal, a Utopia of just the two of us in a bubble. We envelope the world when we want to, close it off just as easily, behind the door of his studio apartment.

We buy groceries and make food and watch French movies and dust and fold socks and read and read to each other. We do all of the small moments that will, in August, make up parts of our daily lives. We have a three-day marriage, and it feels perfect.

We wonder at times if, perhaps even fear that, this euphoria will wear off, that buying groceries will be the chore of going to the store and not the opportunity to figure out what food we will share. The he reminds me that we have seen what our other options are.

We will not always be happy to fold laundry. We will not always be happy that it took so many dishes to make dinner. We will always be happy to forget these things as I lean into him on the couch and his arm moves through my hair and comes to a rest on my shoulder. We will always be happy, and this is not naive. This is realism. This is acknowledging the down moments and accepting the overall, because we have seen unhappy. But even in the unhappy, there is the hope of happy, living for that one weekend a month.