It’s been 5 years since I told her that I loved her. I also did it in the most unromantic way. As a response, she didn’t even say anything she just handed me a three page, back-to-back handwritten note.

I looked at her quizzicaly, she told me that she wrote it a week before. Mustering all my powers of speed reading, my eyes were in a hunt for 3 words. I should have known better and started in the end, but I didn’t. Page after page I was pouring through those clumps of letters. I was only looking for a 3 word sequence that I knew would somewhat define why I’m here.

6 years before that fateful day I was faced with a decision on whether to go to the US or stay in the motherland. This was supposed to be a temporary stint … until now.

What seemed eternity while ruffling through those pages, it felt like I was in some sort of a micro limbo attached to a mini roller coaster. As I was ‘skimming’ through that letter I realize that she was feeling the same way, but I still wasn’t seeing those three words!

I remember a couple months before that she asked me to go rollerblading, I declined because I don’t know how to rollerblade. I told her that I should just take her out to lunch on her birthday because I wouldn’t make this one. We ended up Rollerblading on her birthday and I guess she saw the reason why I didn’t go the first time.

When I got to the last paragraph, there they were’ those 3 words. I looked up with a grin. To think if I didn’t tell her that I loved her, she would have told me first.

That is the original twelvesixteen, as if it happened just moments ago.

elephant shoes mama.