Twelve Years

"Love is a single word. 

A wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge.

That's what it is: an edge; a razor.

It draws up through the center of your life,

cutting everything in two, before and after.

The rest of the world falls away on either side."

 --Lauren Oliver

Twelve years.

624 weeks.

4,368 days.

A single moment in time and an eternity. 

On her wedding day, a girl whispers "I do" and has no idea in that moment what she's actually agreed to.

There's just the commitment of soul to this man, the prayer of courage for uncertain times and the bubble of joy for the best times. 

I've slept with my eyes open, afraid to miss something and yet, it's twelve years on wings...a life built in that space from what has been given and what has been taken away.

I try to reconcile the girl who married with the woman now reflected in the mirror and think that everything is glass, fragile...except this--the warmth and energy passing between me and these four people.

It is a stretching, a striving across the years to claim a life unbound by walls and uninhibited by fear...

This is ours to forge. 

Love.

                                          (Reagan, Makenzie + Konrad)