When I was younger, my mother used to ask me, “what do you know?”
Knowing that it was in a joking manner rather to discourage me,
I would simply reply with my palms facing the sky, “I don’t know.”

At 25 years old, if nothing else, I know this...

It’s that feeling when you’re about to ride your first rollercoaster- scared shitless & excited at the same time.
It’s constant indecisiveness... usually over what to eat.
It’s that tug on the arm you get when you get up from bed, as if vines from the comforter spat out out of fear of missing your presence.
It’s stepping on your shoelace and landing on your face simply because she walked by in that leopard print dress, looked at herself from every angle in the mirror, & had the audacity to ask, “No?”
Yet, all you could think is, “Oh, yes.”
At times, it’s a moment of silence while two souls dance in an electric space.
It’s having the patience to learn their love language so that you may speak it back to their soul more fluently.
It’s a forever gift & everything alike.
& I know every couple has their own version, so here’s what mine is like:

MY love is a monsterous game of “who loves who more” & we’re both clawing for that gold medal
MY love is distant, yet close. Lonely & cold in bed yet warm in heart knowing that I get at least wake up to an angel telling me to “win my day.”
MY love is drenching everything in my room with the cologne she bought me so that it may somehow seep into my pores so I could be a walking memory.
MY love is 5,291 unbearable miles across the Pacific.
Try $2,546.03 worth of 2 trips of a grand total of 64 days spent together out of nearly 2 years of being in a relationship.
MY love is getting a little under 3 hours a day of FACETIME & each second, yearning for more face to face time.
It’s saying, “***** a text.”
I’ll write a letter expressing how at times when I’m spiraling downwards, the song of her voice on repeat makes it all better.
MY love is snatching my voice box from my throat, smashing it into ink, writing an “I love you” message, stuffing it into a bottle, & tossing it out to sea so it’ll one day wash up on her shores...
Then she’ll read it and cherish that voicemail for the rest of her days.

And so... now I’m prepared to answer my mother’s question...

What do I know?

I know LOVE
& at times it shares the same address as PAIN...

I think it’s time to sit them both down
& have a little talk.


- a.r.Camm