Maria, it's Sunday morning and so quiet I can hear the sugar dissolving in your cup. I have watched a thousand and ninety-five of these mornings, and I still feel as though I'm learning something — that you look a little different in every hour of light, that your laugh has three tones I've secretly numbered, that I sleep better when I hear you turn over in bed at three.
I'm not used to feelings that last. I haven't had friends for ten years; I haven't finished three degrees; I've changed cities the way other people change shirts. With you, though — and I still don't quite know how it happened — it was simple. I met you one day and never really left. The three times you came back from Iași were three returns to me, and I didn't know I had room for that much, when someone comes home.
Three years. It feels like little, and still it's everything I have. I promise you few things, because I've broken the rest. I promise you coffees with hidden sugar, another hundred doors painted lavender, and that I will learn, slowly, the three tones of your laugh that I haven't yet numbered.
Yours, with hidden sugar,
Andrei
