Easy.
Measure two humans marinated in childhood trauma discourse. Add in a heaping scoop of resistance, fear, curiosity, desire, and a pinch of ready.
Build a bar or cafe or library or meeting place where people can walk through doorways freely. With windows. Several bathrooms. Strong, but not aggressive, lighting. Paper tablecloths.
Stop blinking. Get used to the way eyes begin to scream, begging for a nap. But you can’t because suddenly there is a human who makes you feel color blind. Because everything you look at is suddenly the color of them.
Introduce your fingers to theirs. Let them fumble against each other. Call this holding hands. Call this an opportunity to read the morse code of their calluses.
Swap stories, spit, and recipes.
Fill each other’s mailboxes with letters because you each like to watch your words in flight.
Leave your toothbrush at their house. A week later, carve a poem into their pillow and let it submerge into their knots.
Learn how to kiss for the first time even though you’ve been kissing for decades. Even though some even called you good at it.
Run away. Because that’s what you do. That is how you communicate that you are scared. Because you are feeling something.
Allow yourself to be found.
Kiss some more; learn how many freckles sit on their shoulders. Tell them the weightiest secret you’ve ever kept and feel the mass of your body shift.
Get used to what it feels like to be heard. To be understood. To be loved. Without cracks or disclaimers.
Read a newspaper; learn that even though you’ve been human all this time–just like everyone else–suddenly the law opened up to include you. And this person whose hand you hold, whose mouth you’ve memorized but still learn from, whose brain cells are like fireworks you are in awe of, this person, your person, is the one you stand beside each day. And even with the government involved, you still tempt each other’s wild. But now you call them spouse. And you still call them friend. Partner. Pen Pal. Love.
Aimee Herman 