January 2012
5 posts
1 tag
Foreign.
I remember my hands fumbling in 3rd grade when I first held chopsticks, I remember hearing Japanese, riding a bike, holding a camera, and feeling the shape of your lips for the very fist time. Foreign. My hands tracing over unlearned and undiscovered facets. Nothing about the firsts were familiar.
Over time - while I am not fluent with chopsticks, my camera, or Japanese, my hands still tremble,...
Date night.
movie theater cashier: do you want butter in the middle of your popcorn, or on the top?
me: um…both? is that even allowed?
you: I married the right woman.
(then you proceeded to brag in a text to your mom about me.)
and I married the right man.
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As we lay down beside each other each night, we are forever separated by your body’s boiling heat, and my body’s frigid need to be drowning in our blankets. You’ll slip your hand through an open space between the feathered comforter & rest it on the small of my back, while I will slip my icy toes a few inches out of my cocoon, and onto your bare leg. Even the simplest of your...
December 2011
1 post
November 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Sometimes, (a lot of the time,) this isn’t easy. I am a difficult woman. However, your willingness (and anxiousness even) to buy a Christmas tree on a whim to put up well over a month before the Holidays. Traveling to Texas and fitting all of yours and mine into one piece of luggage. Your support and infinite desire to see me succeed. Even when that means you must tighten your grip when I...
October 2011
1 post
1 tag
Today we spent our first rainy Autumn afternoon sinking into bubbled bath water until our skin had soaked through. The boiling water baked our flesh into prunes.
We filled our bellies with hot soup and buttered bread for dinner. Chocolate-chip cookies followed for dessert. And now we’re wrapped in our sweaters and around each other. I have a feeling we will be for the rest of the night.
My...
September 2011
3 posts
1 tag
Dear Steven,
Something that is miraculous and calming to my soul - that I find myself appreciating in the ever-so-quickly escaping hours of my day - is this. All of this. You and I. We are not here because being together has been forced, obligated by our history, or because it is easy.
Whether it was miles or mistakes that separated us - we never gave up and we never gave in. You and I both know...
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August 2011
3 posts
1 tag
1 tag
You are soundly asleep beside me. The trees and the wind are participating in a wildly violent game of tug-o-war outside of our window. The blinds are being heaved against its glass. There are dogs chattering in the distance, and there are cars humming throughout the neighborhood. Yet, all I can make out of this catastrophic silence, is the steady breath making it’s way out of your falling...
I love you, effortlessly.
July 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Bare, warm, and vulnerable. I am blanketed by flesh and bones. We make love through the words that swim along the waves between my baby blues and your deep greens. Your lips chase away the ghosts that so heavily trap my lungs beneath my rib cage.
I am you, and you, are me.
1 tag
I have left behind my words in this corner of the internet unintentionally, but in truth- my heart, my mind; my entire being, rather, has been ever-so-thoroughly full.
the entity of my happiness is spilling over at a pace words simply cannot keep up with. the life we have composed together in our glimpse of marriage so far, is a life that I adore- and if I had to give up my words for an entire...
June 2011
5 posts
1 tag
last night we fell asleep with our heads at the foot of our bed, so that we could feel like kids again. getting married doesn’t always mean you have to grow up.
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We so often dream of how our world will be when we are ready to create little lives- to bring into our tiny home, to love with no bounds, and to witness the miraculous glory of God in unimaginable ways through their sweet spirits.
However, for now, it is just the two of us. Nights on the floral print loveseat, my legs seat belted across your lap, chips, salsa, and chocolate soy milk on the side...
1 tag
I wish I could give everyone what you give me.
The solidness in my bones. The cleanliness of my blood. The blue in my eyes. The pigment of my skin. The throb of my heart and the pulse in my wrists. The salt in my tears and the spark on my fingers- as I trace the map of the freckles along your shoulders. I know I know love. And this is exactly it.
1 tag
May 2011
6 posts
1 tag
the smile I hear in your voice when you call me “Tima,” never fails to make my heart swell.
however, when you gently say grace over our supper, with a sweet, soft voice while finishing with “Jesus Christ,” followed by a humble “amen.”- my whole soul sighs with comfort and joy knowing that I married such a good man.
2 tags
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I adore when your unconscious body pulls for my skin, naturally and earnestly- in the calm and quiet seconds before dawn. something, even in the hours when we are without control, is drawing us closer. and this is when I thank the heavens that I am your bride.
2 tags
july 16, 2008
n’tima: “tell me a story”
steven: “one day this lucky kid…met a girl named n’tima. he fell in love with her and decided that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her..and be with her every minute for the rest of his life.. and that two freakin days without her was enough. and he made up his mind that he wants to grow up with her, go through life,...
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this morning you golfed with my grandfather. you texted me in the afternoon and said- “…I’m having tons of fun with grandpa!” not “your grandpa,” you plainly said “grandpa”
and then it hit me like a giant ton of bricks.
we are family.
April 2011
7 posts
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I fell in love with you in fifty days. I’ve been your wife for fifty days.
it feels so good to say that.
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I didn’t insist on buying the swifer wet jet because it’s the best mop for our wooden floors, or it was the least expensive. I made sure we had it in our home simply because of that fragrance. you know the familiar fragrance- the one that accompanied us after okinawian heat had boiled the moisture beneath our skins and after the brisk air had thrown itself at us inside of your parents...
3 tags
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1:30 am woke you with a tickle in your throat. the memories are faint but there was the hallway light and my fingertips drifting across the freckles, and peeling skin along your shoulder blades, then down your spine. you gurgled water and forced the cough down your esophagus; and wrapped your body around mine to pacify yourself to sleep. these are the moments I have been missing out on all my...
March 2011
4 posts
1 tag
3 tags
I give you my life this day In the presence of God And according to His Will I leave my father and mother
And I will cleave to you I promise you, that throughout the eternities that I am blessed to be by your side, as we share our life with God, who gave us one another- I will think the best, assume the good, and doubt the bad. I will forgive you. I will trust you. I will serve you. I will...
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dear mr. preusser
I just want to take this time to tell you how much I appreciate you.
not just the big things- like taking me to the ER when I couldn’t breathe, even though it made you two hours late to work, or insisting on carrying my girly carry-on bag through the airport because you knew it was dragging me down- but even more so, the little things. like spinning me around to the jazz...
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dear steven,
you are my husband. I am your wife. and we are married.
finally.
February 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Dear Steven,
1,035 days ago, I fell in love with you near the sea. Our love has always emulated the ebb and the flow of the ocean and we have defeated each wave, the bending, the billowing, the breaking- through the longing for one another and the hollow ache of missing each other, we granted our hearts closeness like the pulling of the moon from the tide.
6,229 miles, 642 days, and 17 hours separating us-...
1 tag
Watchntima:
steven & n’tima~ february 26, 2011 (by n’tima simons)
I made this video for Steven & our families/friends to watch during our wedding reception. I’ve worked for weeks to convey a certain feeling of gratitude & love
…and I think I’ve finally got it.
this is for you.
1 tag
January 2011
4 posts
1 tag
1 tag
we both know that being engaged has been one of the most exhausting parts of our relationship. it hasn’t been dizzingly blissful. it hasn’t been entirely happy. and it hasn’t been anything like I’d expected. our hands are calloused and our hearts are hard.
but I promise you, I will pick at my brain until only the good pieces blow like free debris through me.
the...
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December 2010
5 posts
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I bake bread & you make the biggest airplane in the Air Force fly. And somewhere beneath the chemical imbalance that resides in our separate bodies, we have found a balance with the combination of our cells. I thank the heavens for that.