Falling in love is not magical on its own; we make it so along the way. It is not a decision but rather an ever-present choice.

We’ve been sold a particular story about love.

That it arrives like weather — sudden, overwhelming, out of your hands. That the falling is the thing. That if you have to work at it, maybe it wasn’t meant to be.

I used to believe some version of that.

And then I started paying attention to the love that actually lasts. The kind you see in the way someone reaches for their person’s hand without thinking. The way they still make coffee the way the other likes it, twenty years in.

The small, unremarkable gestures that are, if you look closely, anything but.

That’s not magic. That’s making.

There’s a difference between falling and staying. Falling happens to you. Staying is something you choose, not once, at an altar or in a moment of certainty, but every ordinary day.

In choosing to come home. In choosing to listen. In the arm that still reaches for her, after all these years, quiet and unhurried, as if it has always known the way.

That’s the love I find myself in awe of. Not the breathless beginning. Though that’s its own kind of beautiful, but the love that has weathered something. That has been tested and frayed and chosen again anyway.

The magic, it turns out, is something we build.

And maybe the most romantic thing two people can do is keep choosing each other long after the falling has settled into something quieter and far more profound.

✨ In the comments, I'd love to hear your thoughts:

What does choosing look like in the love you’ve witnessed or lived, the small, everyday gestures that say I’m still here?

Leave a comment

Her eyes were hungry for something I couldn't name,
        as if she were seeing me for the first time.

"It's so easy to love you," I said,
        truth slipping straight from my soul.

        "You love me?" she teased, her eyes widening playfully,
        though she'd heard the words a hundred times before.

"I felt it the moment I saw you," I replied —

        sinking to one knee.


"You changed my life the instant you appeared,
changed the way I see the world.
It's written in the stars, you know?
        You and I…
And I want to spend every last day of my life with you."

Her eyes filled with tears,
        hands flying to her erratic heartbeat.


        "I can't believe this…"


"Well, believe it," I whispered.

"Because I can't go another day
without telling you what you are to me.
        What you've become."


Will you marry me?

I didn't need her answer;
        her eyes had said yes long before her lips did.

But hearing it aloud…

It was better than the moment everything changed.

        Better than seeing her for the very first time.

✍️ Author’s Note

I wrote this one late at night, Camila’s Todo Cambió playing on repeat while the rest of the house was quiet. There’s a line in that song that kept stopping me — the one about everything changing in a single moment. I must have replayed it a dozen times before I understood what it was trying to tell me.

We talk about love as something gradual. Accumulating. A slow tide. And mostly, that’s true. But sometimes there really is a before and after. A single moment that doesn’t just mark a change. It rewrites the whole story. Makes you look back at every ordinary morning differently.

That’s what I wanted this piece to hold. Not the spectacle of a proposal. Not the hidden ring or the witnesses or the choreography. But the paradox underneath it all.

How you can know someone completely, have told them you love them a hundred times over coffee going cold on the counter.

And yet saying it this way makes it feel like the very first time all over again.

The kneeling isn’t a ritual here. It’s the moment something that was always already true finally gets its shape.

Some loves begin with a feeling. The best ones end with a choice.

💭 A Question for You

Do you think love gets better the longer you choose it?

Leave a comment

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Studio Letters go deeper — into the creative process,
the questions I’m chasing, and the longer reflections
that need more space.

First letter drops early April.

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They danced side to side
        within the boundaries of their hearts.

Fulfilling a playful bet,
        yet exploring their deepest parts.

Every move intentional.
Every gesture welcoming
        as they navigated the floor of their desires.

Jess wrapped her arms around him
        as he slid his hands down her waist.

Rejoicing in the moments,
        enjoying the other.

Both sharing the rhythm
        that their hearts played.

"Can I tell you I love you yet?" Jess said with a coy 
smile.
        "I think you've won this wager."

Evan pulled her closer,
        and she took lead,
                wrapping her fingers through his hair.

No longer just a dance.
No longer a playful bet.

He conceded by nibbling her ear,
        and she reciprocated with a gasp
                as he serenaded a melody of words —

"Jess, I love you."
"Je t'aime, Evan."

✍️ Author’s Note

If Unrequited Confessions was about finding the courage to speak, and All Natural was about what happens after fear finally leaves the room, then A Journey’s End is about what comes when two people stop pretending the game is just a game.

There’s something I find endlessly tender about the way we use playfulness to get closer to the truth. The bet, the dare, the joke that’s only half a joke.

We do it because saying I love you cold, without cover, without something to hide behind, is one of the most vulnerable things a person can do. So we build a little bridge first. We make it a dance. We make it a wager.

This story was written to the sound of All of Me by John Legend, and if you know the song, you already understand what I was reaching for. That particular kind of love that doesn’t ask you to be polished or perfect. That sees the curves and edges, the clumsy moments and the carried-away ones, and says:

“All of that is exactly what I want.”

What drew me to Jess and Evan wasn’t the confession at the end. It was everything that led to it. The intentionality of each movement. The way they both knew, long before any words were spoken, that this had already become something real.

The wager was never really about winning. It was a way of giving each other permission.

I wanted the French at the close, Je t’aime, to feel like Jess meeting him in his own language. Not a translation. An answer. Two people arriving at the same place from different directions, and recognizing each other there.

This is the third story in our March series, and to me it completes something. A beginning, a discovery, and now an arrival.

💭 A Question for You

I’d love to know, have you ever used a bet, a dare, or a little playfulness to say something you weren’t quite ready to say out loud?

Leave a comment

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Studio Letters go deeper — into the creative process,
the questions I’m chasing, and the longer reflections
that need more space.

First letter drops early April.

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See the Zine for A Journey’s End on March 23rd, 2026

“Experiencing this life with you is like living at the peak of a mountain. Taking my breath away, and reminding how finite I am and how truly alive we are.”

There’s something that happens at the top of a mountain that doesn’t happen anywhere else.

The wind hits differently up there. The sky feels closer than it should. And for a moment, you become aware, almost uncomfortably of exactly how small you are against all of it.

And somehow, that smallness feels like a gift.

I think that’s what certain people do to us. Not the ones who make us feel grand or invincible, though that has its own sweetness.

But the ones who make us feel real.

Present. Aware of our own edges and heartbeat. The ones whose presence makes the world suddenly, strangely, more vivid.

I remember standing somewhere high once and feeling the particular ache of wanting someone beside me. Not because I needed rescuing from the vastness of it, but because some views ask to be shared.

Some moments feel incomplete when they’re only yours.

That’s the thing about love that takes your breath away. It’s not always the romance of it. Sometimes it’s the weight.

The reminder that you are here, now, in this body, in this life, and so are they. And that the two of you, small and finite as you are, chose to experience it together.

Being finite next to someone you love doesn’t feel like a limitation.

It feels like the whole point.

Maybe aliveness isn’t something you find alone, maybe it’s something that happens in the space between two people, at the peak of something neither of you could have climbed without the other.

✨ In the comments, I'd love to hear your thoughts — Is there someone in your life whose presence makes the world feel more vivid, more real, just by being there?

📖 Behind the Story

We don’t write honestly about physical intimacy very often. We write around it, perform it, or make it cinematic in ways that have very little to do with what it actually feels like to be a beginner with someone you trust.

I wanted to write the version we don’t see enough.

The one with laughter in it. The one where an “ouch” happens and nobody flinches. Where curiosity leads and ego stays out of the room entirely.

That’s All Natural. Not intimacy as performance, but intimacy as trust; the particular kind of ease that only exists when two people have quietly agreed there’s nothing here to get wrong.

I made one decision that shaped everything: I would write around what was happening rather than through it. Not to be coy, but because the emotional truth I was chasing had nothing to do with the act itself.

It had everything to do with what it feels like to be a beginner in front of someone whose opinion of you matters, and to discover that it costs you nothing.

That’s the real vulnerability here — not the physical closeness, but the willingness to not know what you’re doing and stay anyway.

On the Visual Process

The cover is the only panel in full color, warm and close and laughing. It sets the tone before a single word lands: this is not a serious story. It’s a tender one.

From there, the zine moves into black and white, and the choices become deliberate.

The opening panel doesn’t begin with faces. It begins with feet, tangled and unhurried under sheets. Something small and specific rather than something obvious. An entry point that’s intimate without being declarative.

The hand panels carry the story through touch and guidance; one person leading, the other following, both learning the rhythm together.

And then the “ouch” panel. Three frames: the pull, the moment, and Monica smiling after. That set of frames was my favorite to come up with. That smile is everything —it’s the story’s thesis in a single expression.

The imperfection didn’t break anything. It deepened it.

The final slide closes in complete darkness.

We had nothing to fear.

Nothing after it. Just those five words and the space around them.

The most honest kind of intimacy isn’t about knowing what you’re doing; it’s about trusting someone enough to figure it out together.

💭 A Question for You

Have you ever had an imperfect moment with someone that somehow made you feel closer, not further away?

Leave a comment

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Studio Letters go deeper — into the creative process,
the questions I’m chasing, and the longer reflections
that need more space.

First letter drops early April.

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Read the Original Flash Fiction Here → All Natural

In delight, we looked at each other,
       one on top of the other.

Time flew between us like the lifetimes 
we've shared.

Our laughter ensued while our curiosity 
on the other took hold.

      There was no pressure to get it right.
       No experience required.

"Yes, like that David,"
       in sync with the rhythm our hearts 
       played.
"I love it just like that."

The desire to give came naturally
as we explored, uncontested, the lands 
we embodied.

Explorers and adventurers of our own design.
Monica's fingers traced along my hair,
guiding the cadence of the lessons.

"Ouch!"
I groaned.

"Sorry, love, I got too carried away."
       She said, enticing and coy.

We laughed along with the experience,
teaching our hearts —

we had nothing to fear.

✍️ Author’s Note

If the last story was about finding the courage to say it — this one is about what comes after.

Unrequited Confessions lived in the held breath, the shallow exhale, the words that cost something to speak.

All Natural lives in what that courage makes possible; a natural progression as the second story this month, after the start of a relationship, maybe. Slight pun intended.

Two people on the other side of fear, curious about each other without a script, without pressure, without anything to prove.

I wanted to write about intimacy without writing about intimacy, to show the glimpses rather than the whole picture. The laughter mid-moment. The “ouch” that doesn’t break anything. The way curiosity, when it carries no weight, becomes its own kind of tenderness.

What drew me to this story was the idea that vulnerability doesn’t always look like a confession. Sometimes it looks like two people deciding, without saying it out loud, that there’s nothing here to get wrong.

That they can be explorers, a little clumsy, a little carried away, and that’s not a flaw in the experience.

That is the experience.

The lesson Monica and David are teaching each other isn’t really about touch. It’s about what happens when fear finally leaves the room.

💭 A Question for You

When was the last time you let yourself be a beginner in front of someone you love?

✦

Studio Letters go deeper — into the creative process,
the questions I’m chasing, and the longer reflections
that need more space.

First letter drops early April.

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See the Zine for All Natural Publishes on March 16th, 2026

Can't you feel that when you look at me that way, I simply melt into you without restraints?

Some looks pass over you, and then there are the ones that land.

The kind that finds something in you that you forgot was there, or maybe never let anyone find before. The kind that makes every wall you’ve carefully built feel, suddenly, like a performance you’re tired of giving.

I’ve spent a long time being very good at composure. Being present in a room without ever really arriving. But there have been maybe two people in my life whose gaze made all of that feel like a lie I was telling myself.

Not because they asked me for anything. But because they saw. Fully. Without flinching.

And being truly seen is both the thing we want most and the thing we’ve spent years learning to outrun.

There’s a surrender in that kind of look that has nothing to do with weakness. It’s more like recognition, something in your chest finally exhaling after years of holding its breath. You don’t lose yourself in it.

You stop pretending you were someone smaller.

That’s what that question is really asking, I think. Can’t you feel it? As if the melting happens to both of you. As if letting go isn’t losing yourself, it’s finally coming back to yourself.

Maybe restraint was never protection.

Maybe it was just the long way around.

And maybe the bravest thing we ever do is let someone look at us that way — and not look away.

✨ In the comments, I'd love to hear your thoughts — Has anyone ever looked at you like that, the kind of look that made you forget everything you'd rehearsed?

📖 Behind the Story

This one is personal.

I’ve carried this feeling before, knowing I liked someone, wanting to say it, and letting fear make the decision for me instead.

The rejection never even happened. I just decided it would, and stayed quiet.

This story was my way of going back to that moment. Not to rewrite it exactly, but to imagine the version of me that was braver.

A third-person point of view, almost like watching yourself from across the room, living the moment you wished you’d had.

And I think that’s why it resonates beyond just my own experience.

Most of us have been there, holding something back not because we don’t feel it, but because saying it out loud makes it real.

Makes the answer real too.

What I’ve learned since then is simpler than I expected: say it. Be open to the outcome without being attached to it.

The courage isn’t in the result — it’s in the honesty.

On the Visual Process

The mood was autumn from the start, my favorite time of year, and a season that already holds that particular mix of warmth and longing before anything is even said.

The cover is the only panel in full color.

It’s the establishing shot, the world as it exists before the confession. Two people on a bench, not sitting close. The distance between them says everything before a single word does.

From there, the story moves between two visual registers.

The comic panels carry the scene, gesture, expression, proximity.

Frame 2 was one of the most deliberate choices.

We don’t see his full face, only his mouth from her point of view as he says, “I’ve always been into you, now more than before.”

Her expression holds that blank, processing moment, not quite a reaction yet, just receiving. And underneath it all, quietly, his hand reaches toward hers.

Not grabbing. Just reaching.

The gesture does what the words can’t quite finish.

Frame 3 shifts to black and white. Just the words, floating

Swallowing hard, moving beyond the uncertainty, beyond his fears.

No scene. Just the internal moment before he keeps going.

Frame 4 returns to her, a split frame catching the shift in her expression as the rest of his confession lands.

There’s warmth breaking through, even a small playfulness in how he says it. And the hands, which were only reaching in Frame 2, are now connecting.

Two hands finding each other.

Frame 5 brings the embrace. The veil of guilt lifting, the warmth rising. Her arms around him before she even knows how to put it into words.

And the final card closes in darkness.

His longing was mutual and never one-sided.

Nothing else needed.

In under 80 words, this story holds an entire scene, movement, expression, and physical progression building quietly from one frame to the next.

That hand reaching in Frame 2, and then landing in Frame 4, is the emotional center of all of it.

A short story. But a beautiful one.

💭 A Question for You

Is there a moment you’ve revisited, not to change it, but to finally understand it?

Read the Original Flash Fiction Here

Shallow breaths echoed
         as he tried to find the words.

"I've always been into you,
now more than before."

Swallowing hard,
         moving beyond the uncertainty,
         beyond his fears,
he continued.

"At times, my ego made it harder to say something,
         while holding onto the idea
                    that one day you would tell me.

That, you would look at me and realize
          I was there
                    in front of you the whole time."

A veil of guilt draped over,
         but a warm feeling aroused inside her.

She embraced him,
          not knowing how to reciprocate best—

that his longing was mutual
        and never one-sided.

See the Illustrated Zine. It will be published on 3/9/2026

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✍️ Author’s Note

I think we've all been in that space, wanting to say what we feel, but afraid of rejection, unsure of ourselves. There are so many moments when we have the opportunity to overcome that fear, yet somehow let it pass.

This story came from that place. And from a quote by Karen Salmansohn that stopped me mid-thought:

"The only way to heal deep wounds is through forgiveness."

There's a particular kind of regret that doesn't live in what we did but lives in what we waited too long to say. I don’t recall where I read the quote, but it resonated with me.

It made me think about the courage it takes to say what's important. Especially in matters of love, and how forgiveness isn't always about someone else. Sometimes it begins with the version of you that waited too long to speak.

No matter how far along you are in life, it's never too late to say what matters. To the people you love. To yourself. And overcoming that fear? That's also a way to forgive yourself and heal, all at the same time.

With this particular story, I decided to take a different approach to formatting. It dawned on me recently that we could stylize some of these stories like spoken poetry.

This was a first attempt, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed figuring out the mechanics of what felt visually right.

I'll be trying new techniques with future stories — How exciting is that!?

💭 A Question for You

I’d love to know if you’ve shared this experience. Has there been something you’ve been holding back, not out of indifference, but because saying it out loud made it too real?

See the Zine Published Zine

Death is the background against which life appears. If it had not existed, we would have never known what life is." — Knausgaard

I used to think meaning was something you found. Chased. Earned.

It took a few losses to understand it differently.

Meaning isn’t something you find. It appears that the way a photograph develops in the dark. The contrast does the work. The shadow gives the light its shape.

Knausgaard is talking about death. But I think what he’s really pointing at is this: we only understand what we’re holding when we can see what we could lose.

I’ve felt that most in the quiet griefs. Not the dramatic ones, though I’ve known those too. The relationship that thinned out slowly, until one day there was nothing left to hold. The version of me I had to let go before I could become whoever this is.

Those endings didn’t just hurt. They showed me the shape of what I’d had.

That’s what death does to life. It doesn’t erase it. It defines it.

The skull in dry earth, poppies pushing through. The skull doesn’t stop the flowers. It’s the reason they’re that red. That’s insistent.

I keep coming back to this: maybe every ending is just the background filling in. Painted darker, slowly, so whatever survives can finally come into focus.

Maybe we don’t understand what life is by living it. Maybe we understand it by surviving the things that remind us it could end.

✨ In the comments, I'd love to hear your thoughts — what ending brought something else into sharper focus for you?

📖 Behind the Story

There’s a reason I called her a starlet.

Not a star — a starlet. That specific, tender word for someone on the edge of becoming. Someone with so much promise orbiting her that she practically glows, and yet she’s still figuring out what the light is even for.

That’s your twenties, isn’t it?

You are, in your own world, the lead of your own movie. The camera follows you everywhere. Every late shift, every crowded room, every stranger who holds your gaze a second too long — it all feels like it matters. Like it’s building toward something.

You don’t yet know what the something is, but the not-knowing has its own pull.

It’s that particular season of life where you’re simultaneously naïve and deeply instinctual. You don’t always know what you want, but you know — in your body, before your mind catches up — what you’re drawn toward.

You learn by reaching. By staying. By leaving. By waking up half alone and deciding what that means about you.

And there’s the indulgence of it, too. The flirt here, the gaze there. The fifth held like a song — not because you’ve given up, but because you haven’t figured out where the line is yet.

In a world of new experience, moderation isn’t exactly the first lesson most of us learn. That’s not a judgment. That’s just honest.

Some of the habits that carry us forward are born in those years — and some of the ones we’d quietly like to forget are, too.

I don’t know if when Henri Bardot wrote “94” he intended that kind of story, but when it landed in my ears, something clicked into place. The song’s mood hit that strange overlap between longing and resignation, between I want you more and I’ll never know.

If you haven’t listened to it while reading Starlet, I’d gently suggest you try it. Put it on repeat. The story shifts a little. It breathes differently beneath the music.

On the visual side, this was one of my earlier attempts at building a zine — and what I remember most is how much fun it was to hunt for reference images that could capture the right angles and lighting.

Storyboarding for something that wasn’t going to be animated, but still needed to feel cinematic — that’s a specific kind of challenge. You’re chasing a mood, not motion. Every panel had to hold its own while still carrying the weight of what came before it.

The monochromatic palette was an aesthetic constraint I came to love on its own. Only the cover was initially colored, but later in newer stories we began adding pops of color to certain scenes to deepen the story.

Color would have placed the scene too firmly in time. Gray keeps it floating — could be any city, any night, any two people learning what it means to be alive together for a few hours.

The exit sign above her. The bottle in her hand. The eyes across the dark room.

These were always meant to feel both specific and recurring — the kind of scene that plays out in a thousand different lives, in a thousand different rooms, and is somehow still lonely every time.

We were all that starlet once. Some of us still are.

💭 A Question for You

Your twenties have a way of teaching you things you didn’t know you were learning yet.

Looking back — what’s one moment from that season of life where you were reaching for something, and you still aren’t entirely sure what it was?

Read the Original Flash Fiction Here

📖 Behind the Story

This story grew out of another one I wrote called “All Natural,” a piece about two people exploring each other with laughter and zero pressure. No performance. Just presence.

I kept thinking about that energy. The kind of intimacy that doesn’t need to prove anything because it already knows. The kind where you’ve mapped each other’s bodies a thousand times and still find something new to discover.

We hear so much about the spark of new love. The rush. The uncertainty. But there’s something just as electric about the love that’s been lived in. The love that says “I know you” and “Surprise me” in the same breath.

I’ve been lucky enough to feel that.

The comfort of someone who already knows your rhythms but still leans in like it’s the first time. The trust that lets you say I want to try something new without fear of judgment. The laughter when things don’t go perfectly—because perfect was never the point.

That’s what David and Monica have. Not a relationship running on fumes, but one that keeps refueling. Curiosity as a love language. Adventure as a daily practice.

Holding onto something I believe deeply: the best relationships aren’t the ones where you stop exploring. They’re the ones where you never stop.

💭 A Question for You

When's the last time you surprised yourself with someone familiar?

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📖 Behind the Story

Some songs don’t ask for permission. They just take over.

The acoustic version of “Animal” by Neon Trees has this slow burn to it—stripped down, but still charged. And the image came fast: two people who aren’t thinking anymore. Just feeling. Just surrendering to whatever this thing is between them.

I wanted to write something that honored that part of us we don’t always talk about. The part that isn’t polite or careful. The part that paces like a caged animal when the right person walks into the room.

We spend so much of our lives tamed.

Following the rules, keeping things appropriate, making sure we don’t want too much or feel too loudly. But there are moments—rare ones—when all of that falls away. When you meet someone and your body knows before your brain catches up.

I’ve felt that.

The way your skin wakes up. The way the air gets heavier. The way everything else disappears and it’s just this—just heat, just presence, just two people who stopped pretending they weren’t drawn to each other.

A moment not about forever but about right now. The moment before you think too hard. The moment when instinct wins.

Sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes that’s everything.

💭 A Question for You

When’s the last time you let yourself feel something without overthinking it first?

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📖 Behind the Story

Some songs just feel like summer.

“Briggs” by Mike Mains & The Branches hit me on a drive with the windows down, and I couldn’t shake the image: two people on the hood of a car, watching a storm roll in, not caring about anything except this exact moment.

There’s something about that kind of time—lazy, unhurried, spent with someone who makes the ordinary feel electric. It doesn’t have to be romantic. It just has to be real. The kind of presence where you’re not thinking about what comes next, because right now is already enough.

I’ve had those moments.

Sitting somewhere I probably shouldn’t have been, with someone who made me forget to worry about the future. Laughing at nothing. Feeling like the whole world had shrunk down to just us, and that was fine. More than fine.

That’s what I wanted this story to hold—the feeling of being young enough (or reckless enough, or in love enough) to just be. To close your eyes and let the storm come. To get drenched and laugh about it.

And the ending—“No. For this, I want to keep my eyes wide open”—that’s the shift. When someone moves you so much that you don’t want to miss a single second. When the present stops being something to escape and becomes something to witness.

Some people whisper lightning into your life. They make the ordinary crackle.

This story is for them.

💭 A Question for You

Who’s someone that makes you want to stay in the present moment—not wishing for something else, just fully here?

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📖 Behind the Story

There’s something about that moment—standing across a crowded room, heart hammering, wondering if this time will be different.

I wrote this after listening to “Let Down” by Michigander on repeat, chasing that feeling of hope that refuses to stay buried, no matter how many times it’s been bruised.

The song came on during an autumn drive, and the scene arrived fully formed: golden light, a crowded room, a man gathering courage to cross toward someone who felt like home before he even knew her name.

The lyrics got me—I got high hopes, but they let me down, they usually let me down. That’s not cynicism. That’s history. And still, there’s Charlie, standing up anyway. Trembling hands and all.

I know that feeling.

I’ve been the one sitting in the corner, talking myself out of walking over. Replaying every time I got my hopes up and watched them collapse. Building a case for staying put.

And I’ve also been the one who stood up anyway.

Turned back around. Went for it.

That one choice shaped so many parts of me—set my life on a track I never could have pictured from where I was standing.

That day is etched in my memory.

The one time it didn’t fail. The one-time hope actually held.

And somehow, that single memory quiets all the times it didn’t.

I think we all carry our disappointments like invisible weight. Every time we’ve been let down becomes another reason to stay put, to protect what’s left.

And yet.

Something in us keeps standing up. Keeps asking, Can I have this dance?

I wanted the imagery to feel warm but fragile—sunshine and flowers against the awareness that this could all fall apart. The sunflower felt right. Something that turns toward light instinctively. Something bold enough to grow tall, knowing storms will come.

The ending—hoping he wouldn’t mess it up—that’s hope wearing its most honest face. Not confidence. Not certainty. Just... trying.

💭 A Question for You

When’s the last time you let yourself hope for something, even when past experiences suggested you shouldn’t?

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📖 Behind the Story

I’ll be honest—I don’t like Romeo and Juliet.

Not because the story isn’t powerful. But because we’ve romanticized tragedy for so long that we forget something important.

Love doesn’t have to end in death to matter. It doesn’t have to be doomed to be real.

So when I heard Peter McPoland’s “Romeo & Juliet,” I knew I needed to flip the script.

The moment the name “Rose” came to mind, everything clicked. Of course. A rose—beautiful, yes, but also thorned. Protection and softness in one. The whole proposal speech built itself around that metaphor.

I wanted Rose to acknowledge the Romeo and Juliet story—to honor what it represents about intensity and passion—but then ask for more. Ask for better. A love that doesn’t burn out in five days but builds a life across decades.

The whole story takes place in a single moment—Rose on one knee, Evelyn’s stunned silence, the question hanging in the air. Public proposals always carry this extra weight because everyone’s watching, but in that pause before the answer, it’s just the two of them.

I kept returning to touch—trembling fingers, the box opening, eyes meeting. The physical tells us what words can’t. Rose’s shaking hands reveal more about her vulnerability than any internal monologue could.

The structure mirrors the emotional arc: nervous opening → steady speech → vulnerable crack in her voice → the enormous pause → joyful release. That pause is everything. It’s where all the fear lives, all the possibilities, all the years of their relationship compressed into a single breath.

There’s something about saying “I seek forever” instead of “I want forever.” Seek feels more active, more deliberate. It acknowledges that forever isn’t something you find—it’s something you choose, every day, together.

The closing deliberately doesn’t show us what happens next. We don’t see the ring go on, the kiss, the celebration. What matters is that moment of choice—Evelyn’s “yes” rising clear and joyful to the sky. That’s the whole story. Everything else is just an epilogue.

This is for everyone who’s tired of tragic love stories. For everyone who wants to rewrite the old narratives into something that chooses life, chooses joy, chooses more.

💭 A Question for You

What story have you been told about love that you’d like to rewrite?

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📖 Behind the Story

I’ve noticed something about love: the people who give it most freely are often the ones who feel they deserve it least.

Not the loud, toxic kind of unworthiness. The quiet kind—the person who wakes up every day still surprised someone chose them.

This piece came from Anees’ song “Slip,” especially that line: “I’m unworthy of your treasure / But I’m working under this pressure / To keep you here forever.”

I kept thinking about how self-worth shows up in my own relationships. How intimacy isn’t always passion—sometimes it’s just waking up next to someone and choosing them again.

The whole story takes place in bed at different times. Morning. Night. Anniversary morning ten years later. I wanted to show how a whole life can exist in these small moments we don’t photograph. The ones that are just ours.

“Infinito Amore” plays with the paradox at the heart of this story—he wants all the minutes, knows forever won’t be enough, yet still feels unworthy.

How do you hold infinity when you don’t believe you deserve it?

There’s also something about saying it in Italian that grounds the story for me. It makes the love feel timeless, bigger than just these two people.

The repetition of “I don’t deserve this” mirrors those intrusive thoughts that loop in our heads. But here’s what matters—she never validates those thoughts. She doesn’t argue or try to convince him.

She just keeps choosing him.

That’s what love does when words aren’t enough.

I used physical details throughout—fingers in hair, lips on chest. We feel things in our bodies, not just our minds. Sometimes what our bodies say matters more than words.

The way she fits against him. The weight of her head on his chest. His fingers tangled in her hair like he’s trying to hold her there forever.

Then comes the reveal: this isn’t new love uncertainty. This is a decade of waking up afraid.

That’s the real ache.

We carry our wounds into our joy. Love doesn’t always heal us—sometimes it just teaches us to live with the ache differently. To hold infinity even when we don’t believe we deserve it.

To wake up afraid and choose to stay anyway.

💭 A Question for You

What do you hold that you’re still learning to believe you deserve?

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📖 Behind the Story

I wrote this after thinking about all the advice we carry when we leave home—all those voices telling us who we should be, what we should want, how we should spend our youth.

But sometimes, in a crowded room halfway across the world, you realize the only voice that matters is the one saying yes to what your heart actually needs.

The story came from Jordy Searcy’s “Love & War in Your Twenties”—a song that captures that beautiful, terrifying feeling when you’re supposed to have all this freedom, but you’re also carrying everyone else’s expectations like stones in your pockets.

I kept thinking about leaving home. All the advice I’ve gotten over the years from friends, family, and influential figures in my life.

Looking back, it felt like living in this enchanted dream state where you’re trying on different versions of yourself, following advice that sounds magical but doesn’t quite fit.

Then you have these moments—like meeting someone across a bar—that wake you up to what you actually want.

That’s when you stop performing someone else’s vision of your life and start writing your own.

Well. At least that’s the hope.

Creative Choices:

The repetition of the father’s advice creates an echo effect—it follows Ezra everywhere until that moment in the bar when it finally goes quiet. That’s when his own voice takes over.

I wanted the setting to feel both specific (Bangkok pub, dimly lit, crowded) and universal. That moment of eye contact across a room that changes everything? That’s timeless. That’s everywhere.

The closing deliberately doesn’t resolve, which is counter to most flash fiction I write. We don’t know if Ezra and Marcus will fall in love. We don’t even know if they’ll exchange numbers.

What matters is that Ezra chose possibility over prescription.

He chose his own yes.

💭 A Question for You

What advice have you carried that you finally had to set down?

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What are holidays but designated days, reminders to communities to take a break? Maybe a day to do as you see fit, but also to be reminded of something. To pause and reflect on the designation. With mass market media, sometimes holidays don’t feel like what they may have been intended to be. Maybe they’ve simply become markers for our memories. An all-purpose tool to give us finite beings a means—without having to think too hard—to instinctively recall the passage of time, to make memories and give our lives some meaning.

This Thanksgiving, I learned what those markers really mean—sitting across from my grandfather, listening to the choices that made me possible.

He started with how he met my grandmother. He’d traveled to another town in the countryside seeking a woman who wanted nothing to do with him. Instead, he ran into my grandmother at a wedding. Through some small talk—and her sass—he was hooked. I laugh now because that sass, always followed by her wonderful smile, was exactly what made her so great.

It took time for her to come around. He had to speak with her father and mother just to get permission to talk to her. Somehow, it worked out.

They got married, as was custom at the time. They lived together and had a child almost every year for nearly a decade. During that time, they moved from the countryside to the city. My grandfather was a farmer who cultivated coffee and other staples. He had ten cows, and when they made the move, he sold them and bought land in the city. He built his home, set up a small convenience store—what we call a colmado in the Dominican Republic. He acquired a truck—in the 1970s, for a family like his, this was everything. With that, he got into the coal-making and distributing business.

Later, in the 1980s, his brother convinced him to come to the United States. I’m not sure what made the decision final—they were living a comfortable, good life. But they made the transition. One by one, they brought the family over.

There are so many questions I still have, and I plan on making a list to follow up with my grandfather. But sitting there, what resonated wasn’t just what he did—it was imagining the weight of that choice. A father of eleven kids in his forties, choosing to leave his country, his language, everything he’d built. Starting over in a place where he’d be a stranger. The life of an immigrant who doesn’t speak the language, rebuilding from scratch. That kind of courage—I’m not sure I could have done it. I’m not sure I could have looked at everything I’d worked for and said, “We’re leaving. We’re starting again.”

But he did.

Then I heard stories from my mom’s cousins—teenagers crammed into a three-bedroom apartment, so many bodies in one space it seems impossible now. But back then? It was just how it was. Kids are resilient, especially where there’s love. They reminisced about those years like they were golden, and maybe they were. Maybe that’s what resilience looks like—not enduring despite hardship, but finding joy within it.

That unity didn’t end when they grew up. I remember the 2000s—every weekend, some family gathering. Always meeting up, always doing something together.

Now my weekends disappear into errands. But back then, time wasn’t scheduled on designated days—it was made because they lived close and wanted to be together. Catching up. Dancing. Cooking. Eating. No agenda, no end time. What a social fabric that was. Today, scattered across states, we’ve reduced that richness to designated holidays.

It was beautiful to see the impact of those micro-decisions. How I’ve taken for granted the space and time to be with family. How much effort I place on other things rather than meeting up with the people I care about, being there, and making memories.

Like the ones I made this Thanksgiving.

The entire weekend, we were at someone’s house, hanging out like we did in those long-gone New Jersey days. Up until 2 or 3 a.m., wishing it would never end. Recalling lessons learned. Discussing life, personal matters. Supporting one another. Laughing and bringing it all together.

Sometimes I think about my twenties—all that time I spent elsewhere, doing other things. But we all go through periods of growth and exploration before we choose where we want to be, who we want to stay close to. I think I’m choosing now.

Because one day, I’m going to be on that side of the chair like my grandfather—reflecting on the small choices we made day in and day out, not knowing the outcome but living the results days later.

He didn’t know then that selling those cows would lead to me, here, listening. And I used to think I had time to ask all my questions.

Now I know—the stories are still being told, and I need to be there to hear them.

✨ What’s a story from your family that you’re grateful you heard—or one you wish you’d asked about while you still could?

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“Grief has a strange way of clearing the fog. It asks what you want your next years to look like, who you want beside you, what kind of person you are becoming.”

Some seasons arrive without asking permission. They show up quietly at first — then all at once, like the moment you realize someone you love is slipping away from this world.

These past few weeks have brought me back to the edges of those old feelings. I’ve been moving between loss and reflection, between the weight of goodbye and the strange calm that comes after.

My grandmother has been in and out of the hospital. The first call said she was close to the end. Then another call said she was awake but unable to speak. By the time I flew home and stood beside her bed, the only language she had left lived in her eyes. They were wide and alert, full of years I never fully understood and stories I wish I had asked sooner.

I told her everything I needed to say — that we are here because of her. That she carried our family farther than she ever knew. That love travels across oceans and still finds its way home. My father stood beside me, tall and silent. I don’t think he knew how to express what this was doing to him. That generation taught us to be strong, but rarely how to name our grief. I could feel something break inside him. I could feel something settle inside me.

The days that followed were spent shuttling between the clinic and my relatives’ homes. I listened to my uncles’ tell stories about her early years. My cousins shared memories from the childhood we all lived in fragments. One life touching many. One woman shaping an entire world before any of us learned to speak.

I kept asking myself what all this work and striving is meant to lead toward. We chase money and security and progress, but somewhere along the way, the thread that held families close began to loosen. My grandmother’s life reminded me that purpose is not a future achievement. It is the way we show up in moments like these. It is presence. It is love. It is remembering who we belong to.

I found myself quietly reevaluating everything — friendships, relationships, how I spend my time, what I want to build, what I want to carry into the next chapter.

After saying what I needed to say, I felt a peace I didn’t expect. A warmth that wrapped itself around the fear. Something in me is shifting. I don’t know where it will take me, but for the first time in a long time I feel steady. I feel present. I feel like I’m standing in the doorway of something new.

Death came close again today. My grandmother was taken to intensive care. Her oxygen dropped to dangerous levels and she is now intubated. The news cracked something in me, yet the peace remained. She lived a long life. A full life. When her journey ends, I hope I carry her memory with the same quiet strength she carried all of us.

Grief changes a person. But I’m learning it can also guide you — toward what matters, toward the people you love, toward a life you didn’t know you were ready for.

I don’t know where this path will lead, but I feel myself walking it with open hands.