Difference

The words you said were unfamiliar. But the way your eyes lit up was not.

The roll of your tongue was unreplicable. But the lilt in your voice was not.

Your expressive face spoke louder than words that I couldn’t understand.

I tried, I really did.

Took classes, bought a dictionary or hundred, forgot the return ticket to home.

Because by your side felt better than any home I’d known.

That easy smile, the carefree gaze, the ease with which you welcomed a mere tourist into your space.

I don’t understand the words you say. But I think I recognize the song your heart sings.

Unfamiliar words suddenly brought a familiar ache, one of longing.

Unfamiliar traditions brought a familiar joy, one of togetherness.

Sometimes hope is replaced by doubt.Is it really possible, or even plausible for us to be?

Different people, different languages, different cultures.

But then, the same heartbeat.

They say that we all see the same moon, the same sun and the same stars. I think through your eyes, I saw them in a way I couldn’t before.

Will our differences be obstacles forever?

Will I eventually learn what those complex words mean?

Will I still feel the same spark when I don’t have to read your eyes to learn the words of your heart?

Will you?

But the soft warmth in my soul whenever I understand a word or two holds a beacon of reassurance. The connection we have, runs more than skin deep. It runs beyond conversation and communication and straight to understanding and love.

Languages are a viciously beautiful thing, a gift and a curse, a bond and a barrier.

One of them, now dead, sums up my life before you in a single word.

Nodus tollens : The feeling that you’ve lost the plot of your own life.

I hadn’t lost it actually.

It just took me a spontaneous decision, a trip across the world and your love to understand that the rest of my book was in a different language, and I needed help to translate it.

A lonely tourist with no knowledge of this part of the world, a local with no world outside this town.

What a pair we make.

But worlds are subjective, and now, you make up all of mine.