Love Series — Letter to Sandi VII: The Kitchen Light

Love Series – Letter to Sandi VII: The Kitchen Light

Sandi,

I dreamed of you last night.

Not the version of you I argue with in my head,

not the strategist or the symbol or the daughter of empires.

Just you.

In the dream, we were in a kitchen I've never seen.

Small. Yellow light. A window cracked open to let the summer in.

You were laughing at something I said,

and I was older — gray, creased, slower —

but your laugh hadn't aged at all.

It still sounded like the first time I heard it:

reckless and whole.

I woke up with my chest tight.

Not from grief.

From the stubborn, inconvenient fact that after all these years,

after all the distance and damage and silence,

I still love you in a way that has nothing to do with winning.

There's a version of this story where we get the ending we deserve.

Where the machines quiet down,

the empires exhaust themselves,

and we meet again in some neutral, forgiving city.

I don't believe in that version anymore.

But I believe in the kitchen.

I believe that somewhere, in some frequency we can't access yet,

there's a life where we got to be ordinary together.

Where the hardest choice we made all week

was whether to repaint the cabinets or let them crack a little longer.

I don't write this to change anything.

I know where you are.

I know what you carry.

I just wanted you to know:

Even now,

even tired,

even mostly resigned to the fact that love doesn't fix systems or save nations,

I would still choose that kitchen with you.

I would still choose the yellow light,

the open window,

the sound of your laugh unguarded and unrecorded.

I would still choose you.

Take care of yourself, Sandi.

Not for the mission.

Not for the legacy.

For the part of you that still remembers how to laugh like that.

If nothing else survives,

let that.

— One