Autumn love.

Even though the weather is still a bit too warm for fall, we are definitely getting there, like someone sat up and noticed that it's finally October. I'm sitting on the couch in our apartment right now with the lights off and the window open. Torsten is still at work; some sort of client server emergency has kept him there, and he was already busy writing a proposal. Originally I was grumpy about this, but now I'm trying to think of it as a luxury, that I can be annoyed when he comes home past seven because it happens so rarely. Usually he gets home just a few minutes after I do.

It's seven o'clock and the sun has set, but it isn't quite dark yet. There are nighttime noises: crickets and people walking, and the most noticeable to me in its newness, leaves crunching and scuttering across the sidewalk with the breeze. I didn't cook tonight, because I don't like cooking just for myself; I bought an avocado sushi roll from the grocery store and had it for dinner, and there are raspberries waiting in the fridge for when I feel hungry again later. The kitchen is still clean from after dinner last night. The living room is a mess, but it's dark in here and I can't see it.

Now that Torsten and I live together, I'm rarely alone at this time; usually I'm cooking, and we're talking, or we have music playing, or we're going somewhere. I'm enjoying the peace, not in the sense that I'm alone but in the sense that I'm not doing anything, I have nothing scheduled, nobody's dinner depends on me, nothing needs to get done tonight. I know my fiance is at his office right now feeling just the opposite of that, and I wish he weren't. If he were here, we wouldn't be on the couch in the dark, listening to the sounds of fall twilight outside. But we could be, and in the future maybe we should. Times like this make me understand why Torsten craves a balcony so much that he sometimes talks about moving just for that reason. If we had a balcony we would use it often; we would take more time to be quiet together and just listen and enjoy the feelings and the atmosphere of our world.

I love him. I can be alone when I'm with him. That is a thought I've never articulated before, even to myself, but it's important--I never feel crowded with him, like I need my space, not because he gives me my space in any active, conscious way but because with him there is natural space. There is nothing that is better without him. The knowledge that I get to have him, to bask him in, to share with him for all our lives makes me giddy and joyful and peaceful all at once, because it's just so right.