Archives and Longings

I was upgrading several things earlier, which meant I had a lot of waiting time, of simply staring at the progress bar until the updates pull through, hoping that there won't be any error and I won't have to read through logs. You had said good night then and I had moved your text message immediately into my archive folder, which now stands to fifteen hundred messages. All from you.

I don't keep a lot of things, not movie tickets or receipts or any form of memorabilia. I didn't keep your first text message. Or your second. Or your third. Or your fourth. The oldest one I kept was dated March 1, 2010--because it made me laugh. Because it wasn't supposed to be sent to me.

I read some of them, randomly, the earlier ones, the ones that dated back a year ago until a few months back, petty misunderstandings included. There were the things you used to wonder, way back--what would it be like to lie beside me while it's raining outside? What would you say when we meet again? And what would you do? How would it feel like to travel together, with me, just us, waiting on airports and chasing airplanes? There were the things you wanted to do--to eat at Pancake House again, to sleep and wake up beside me, among the GP-rated things you wanted to do with me and to me.

I felt a kind of wistfulness going through the text messages. That was our history. More than a year of wondering and waiting, longing and loving through text messages. We held on, for more than one year, not so much on a past, but on the promise of a future. We didn't have much of a past; we met just when I was about to leave. There wasn't much foundation to begin with, just love.

And now we're back again to that, to text messages and different time zones. But for one month, this past month, we've had something else. Something more definite and tangible than all the sweetest things we have said to each other. A taste and a glimpse--more action than words--of how much I love you, a kind of fulfillment to promises made. And perhaps answers to some of the things you used to wonder and things you wanted to do.