Have you ever tried to describe the feeling of love? The knotted ties in your stomach, that wrap themselves around your rib bones and color your stomach fluids. They’re pink. And maybe red. But they all flourish and tie around each other like two lovers with limbs hung tight around, always hesitating to let go. Yes, that’s love. Love is nice.

I guess I shall attempt yet again another post about how incredibly in love I am. It sounds contrite, and it even feels rather silly, to say the least. Everyone knows what it is, yet no one knows how to describe it. Over one month of marriage already, and I look at my husband and think, “I can’t believe I’m married to him. I can’t believe we’ve been together for 8 and a half years.” I asked him the other day, “When does this newlywed feeling die down?” I don’t really know if it does, considering I was so in love with him before we got married, and even then it was already 8 years in the making of the Life of Helen and Dave. Now we’re into the new stage in our lives, and I don’t see any chance on God’s green earth where this feeling will dull in my heart.

It’s cupped, held gently by the winds of time. It’s stroked and nurtured with each passing funny face he gives me, each joke he tells me. It grows because it’s trusted, and the long years have become normalcy. And yet the normalcy doesn’t get old. I come home, and I see him, and my heart flutters like butterfly wings on a windy summer day. I must have memorized the lines on his face, each scar on his body, the way his hips curve just so, or the way his arms feel when they are around me. I can close my eyes and judge exactly, to the point, where my head fits so perfectly in the soft curves of his neck. I can smell him even now, when he has been long gone from home, at work, after the wee hours of the morning of getting ready. I can spot him blindfolded because my aura recognizes his. All so familiar, yet all still with such a new feeling to it.

I can see us grow old together. At first, it was a little girl’s fantasy. When I first met him, I was afraid to imagine such happiness. Angry, depressed, scared, alone — the fantasy grew until we became “official,” past the mere point of friendship, even past the declaration of “best friend.” And then somehow, the words “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” are dull in comparison to who we are to each other. Didn’t sound right even then. After 8 years, the words “fiance” and “fiancee” felt more of a match for us, but even then, the lighting is dull in the spark of our love. Now, the words “husband” and “wife” wrap around our lives, encompassing everything we are. And still, while it surpasses the meanings of “boyfriend” or “fiance,” the word “husband” still doesn’t describe exactly who he is to me. The colloquial “love birds” and all the other cliche terms and phrases used to describe young love seem pale.

And all I can do is use a smile to describe his footprint on my heart. Just a simple smile.

“Are you happy, Pixie?” he asks me almost nightly.
I look at him, unable to describe just how silly the mere word “Yes” is, and still unable even more so to come up with a better word.

“Yes,” I answer.
He smiles as if he already knew the answer before I uttered it, and I asked him in return if he is happy with me. I already know the answer too.

“Yes.”

When words can’t describe the true emotions of the heart, we are left with simple responses to simple questions. And perhaps that is all that needs to be understood: love is simple.