December 29, 2025

Chloe has an easy laugh; crow’s feet that punctuate the corners of her eyes when she grins. When she laughs with her entire belly, I imagine the dusty curtains of a dark home being yanked open dramatically, the sun bathing the worn floorboards and asking if they remember how it feels to be in the light.

Behind closed doors, she shines brighter. That is where she is my Chloe.

Like when she twirls her front hair and gawkily holds the scissors in front of our bathroom mirror, intending to trim her bangs but ending up with accidental micro-bangs and a beanie she refuses to take off for two weeks. I tease her about the choppiness just to see the flush of pink rise in her cheeks, a warm hue that makes my stomach do somersaults.

We have created our own dialect, a Sims-like mumble where we soften the hard sounds of every word until they are round and safe. An amalgamation of undecipherable noises that the rest of the world would call nonsense, but we call ours.

Maybe love is just the moments we choose to create. Like yesterday, when I came home to find the gray shower mat. She had vacuumed it in the specific triangular pattern I like. Not a pattern anyone else would notice, just me. And I laughed. And then I felt the sting of tears, because it is a strange and heavy thing, feeling so completely seen in the ways the rest of the world doesn’t even know to look.

Fresh from the shower with a damp towel clinging to my hips, my chest bare and my scars peppering the skin, I throw my arms out and wildly dance around her, catching her off guard in the living room, and she dances right back. A happy tangle of hands and no-one-can-ever-see-me-dance-like-this sway. No music. Just two idiots spinning in a circle, thinking of their tomorrows in twos.

I think back to when I first saw Chloe, in a dimly lit parking lot almost two years ago. Under a post light, I saw her wavy brown hair softly framing her face. A dark puffer jacket dangling just a little bit past her knees. Eyes that danced. Crow’s feet. And the softest of a smile.

Her first word to me was just, “Jen?”

That was when the curtains opened. And the walls? They haven’t stopped singing since.