Contentedness looks marvelous on the face of your love. The shine in his eyes, the huff of his breath, his mouth wide, curved, red. He glows here. He shimmers. He is iridescence on the face of the desert; you can barely stand to look at him for fear he will burn your eyes. But you cannot take your eyes off him for fear he could vanish into the heat, a mirage of the desert.
You realize something: this is not contentedness on his face. This is happiness. This is joy. This is something altogether different—fulfillment. He belongs here.
Is that it? No. It can’t be, can it? So soon, just like that, he is in love and that’s all? He always did have a habit of falling in love quickly.
This place, this new place you live now, this desert with the river not so wide as the ones you are used to, this desert with the blue birds and the green trees and the white mountains—is so different from how you thought it would be. You don't know what it is you feel here, but it is not joy, no. You are not happy here.
You don’t feel content in any which way. But you don’t want to. Never “contentedness,” such a word that is the epitome of average. You promised that to one another, those five years ago. You promised to leave contentedness behind. That is why you are here in the first place; you are leaving contentedness, mediocrity, just-so, status quo, settling in, all of that, you are leaving all of that behind. You are striking out into the unknown.
You promised. Standing together before the judge, fumbling with sweaty fingers that slipped and fidgeted. You promised to take hold of life and never let go, not so long as there were words left to say and adventures to take and breath to breathe. You promised to live more, to be more, forever and ever, as long as you both shall live.
And who knows how long that will be, how long forever will last? you ask. Who knows how long forever will be? Not you, no certainly not you, but you agree forever has yet to end, you have yet not come undone. So you slam down the trunk lid and brush back your hair from where it has stuck to your sweaty lips, your sweaty forehead, the sweaty corners of your eyes that won’t dry. You bring the rest of the boxes upstairs to the apartment that smells of sawdust and plaster. You fumble with the new keys. Your eyes take hours and days and months to dry, even in the desert.
When will this new place feel like home? When will the desert become home? What does home even feel like anymore? Bit by bit your home vanished until all that was left of years of you was packed up into twenty boxes in the corner of the apartment, and seven more in the trunk of the car. You stared unseeing through the windshield and couldn’t remember the contents of those seven boxes you brought with, all you could fit after the suitcases and the cats hissing in their carriers, and you wondered why you had any of it at all. Covered in the dust of the road, the dust of the burning desert, you wished all of it would go.
But you are here now. Your new desert home.
It’s time to look forward.