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For my love on our 22-year anniversary.

Summer is here and today we celebrate our years together. Something low-key given the heat. Exploring a castle. Dinner by the water. Our time out together as part of a city and a country waking up after COVID kept us inside and anxious for more than a year. Each of us is half-vaccinated. The masks are now just used for the Metro. We can be city dwellers again. We can be in the full colors of the sun, alive and grateful for the world. And I hope each other.

 263

Happy monthly anniversary, my love. We are one month shy of 22 years, and what a year we had. Readjustments and relocations, a new country and a new language...the latter of which you are mastering in your introduction class. The time between last year and now feels stretched and distorted, as if it was bent around corners and pushed through deep water to get to now. Soon, we will be vaccinated, soon life will be back to what normal was. Soon, we can together breathe some relief. Hopefully that soon will land before our 22-year anniversary, when we can finally travel, making Europe seem more than a digital stretch of Google Maps and something more like a shared memory.

 262

Happy monthly anniversary. A quick marker for another month. I'm racing to update design documents, taking on the role of a director and a writer for the upcoming game story arc. Everything is an anxious blur, but I cannot forget this day, this part of the month with meaning. The weather has turned into spring, mild and warm at long last. I hope the light makes you happy. I hope the sight of the sea, blue and infinite, out the east window, gives you a sense of solace. I hope you know you are loved. 

In two months, it will be 22 years. By then, maybe we will have our vaccines. Maybe the world will be more open to us. Maybe life will be less dormant. A true spring for us and our lives. 

 261

To my love. Spring is finally here. The lockdown is getting closer to ending, although we don't have a firm date or even a clue when we will get vaccines. We keep moving forward. We keep trying. The increasing sun helps. The sense that the darkness and cold helps. There is something else coming, something better. I hope, no matter what, that you know you are loved. I hope you will be happy in the coming months. I hope I have been kind and loving to you. 

 260

It's late winter in Denmark. The snow is melted, leaving behind little lakes and ponds everywhere. Today, our monthly anniversary, the sun is out and we are slowly coming out of the dark of the season. It helps us endure another month of lockdown. I know this is not the vision of living in Europe that you had. I hope soon it will be better. I hope for better months to come. I hope you are happy, and that you know that I love you.