Green Light

I stopped at a red light earlier today. (It seemed logical.)
I was listening to an audiobook at the time, wherein one of the characters promised he would write to another character constantly. I had to tell myself that he meant email, because my first thought was that he meant handwritten letters. But the other character would not have a permanent address, because she was going to spend some time traveling the world. Email is the only thing that makes sense.
And because I absorbed my twin brother's brain while in the womb, I spent the next 20 milliseconds pondering the profound implications of this...
A letter requires an address. It requires that the recipient is static. But an email lives in some ethereal cloud and can be summoned at any computer with an internet connection, or from a phone. The latter character in the story could have received and replied to any communication from the former character with ease. Instantaneously. Anywhere on earth.
Crazy stuff.
Juxtaposed upon this is an unsubstantiated fact that most people live their entire lives within an hour of the place they were born.
Perspective: If you took the minute it takes to let that sink in and spent it driving towards the hospital where you spent your zeroth birthday, the odds are that you would only need to travel 59 nostalgic miles more before you got there to reminisce.
On the subject of reminiscence, a few years ago, I remember distinctly thinking about how I resented my loved ones, because the thought of losing them was keeping me locked in a dead-end existence. I would die there, a whopping 40 miles from my birthplace. Of course, I had obviously misplaced my resentment, because it was not my loved ones keeping me there; It was my fear of losing them. Of being far away. I was too afraid to leave them all behind.
It had taken a 5-hour trip to convince me that my fears were ill-founded and to create and nurture the thought that I don't have to stay here anymore.
In an age where I can talk to friends on the other side of the world in realtime, where any locale on earth is a webcam away from my present location, what is trapping me in a backwoods retirement community for the rest of my life? What held me down and convinced me that this place would be my home?
My home can be ephemeral! I can go anywhere on earth and live there. What a sublime concept! If you have the power to transport yourself to any location on earth, why would you limit yourself to a circle with a one-hour radius?
It is amusing to think that you can begin to realize that something is possible after you have already prepared to do it.
My reality is in transit.
...And then the light turned green and I pressed down the accelerator.

Does She Know?

She tells me she loves me, in her own way. Does my smile convey what is so clearly echoing in my heart?
Does she know what it means to me?
I sit and worry, worry about getting older, about being less to her, that this present edition of me will be the best that I can ever be for her. That she will find my hidden flaws, or begin to notice my not-so-hidden flaws. That I will do something to ruin it.
Never once do I begin to imagine that she is thinking the same thing, because all these things do not make sense where she is concerned. She will never stop being beautiful to me, and my love for her can only grow. No flaw can appear that would threaten that; and I know her in my heart, more than anyone could. She is there even now, living and breathing. I know her like she knows me, because we are the same. We exist as one being in two bodies, longing to reunite. She could never ruin this, nor stop me loving her, because it is impossible to change the nature of our existence. We exist to be together.
In a moment, I can realize that she feels the same. That she is worrying the same worries. How bizarre that she could begin to suspect anything could quench the fire of my love, the immense conflagration that threatens to overtake me entirely.
I feel that I should begin to see myself like she sees me. The same way I see her. The way I can look into her eyes for hours and continually be amazed that she is looking back at me. The euphoria that her existence affords me. The feeling that permeates every cell in my body, as if every star in the universe is converging on one spot in my heart, radiating a warmth that I've only heretofore felt in the small amount to which a sunbather can attest. That she might love me as much as I love her.
Does she know what it means to me?
I can write every thing in my heart to put a fixed meaning on the love I have for her, but it is still. Not. Enough.
It's as if the words of every language are sentient enough to know better than to be so absolute. That a fixed meaning would not do justice to the all-encompassing passion that compels me to continue existing. What made me live before this? What fueled me? What drove me?
How is it possible that the one who has led me to a deeper understanding of who I am, of what my life is capable of being, of what love is, has lived for almost as long as I have and not made me aware of her being until now? How have I walked down this dark plane for years without seeing the effusive torch she wields and embodies?
Does she know what it means to me?
Her smile simultaneously quiets my mind and lights up a million synapses, bursting with new information, sending sparks of knowledge through every nerve, a more profound version of the feeling racing to every extremity, sending a light I can almost convince myself that I can see from the tips of my fingers, illuminating the room. I am awash in love aglow, listening to her voice singing in my memory. The air thickens with a sweet fragrance, the source of which I cannot identify. I can taste her on my lips.
Does she know what it means to me?