June 5, 2012

My dearest,

“Hey, guess what I found?” you say, sounding jubilant.

“What?” I ask.

“This book. It’s a sequel to the one I was talking about earlier — ‘The Missing Piece’ — though I’ve not read this one before.”

“What’s this one called?”

“‘The Missing Piece Meets the Big O’,” you reply.

It sounds somewhat dodgy but the illustrations are childlike and beautiful. The words are in Chinese though. A translated edition. “Will you read it to me?” I ask.

“Okay,” you say.

And so we sit together by the sofa reading this quiet and curious book. You flip the pages and you read slowly, in Mandarin. I listen. We snuggle together.

When you’re finished, I ask you if we are two missing pieces who’ve found each other. You shake your head and say, “We’re more like two Big O’s”, pointing to our widening bellies.

Can’t argue with that.

Yours, ever and always.