Zion

We came around a bend in the trail and the whole canyon opened up — two thousand feet of red rock going gold at the top where the sun caught it — and Ethan made a sound I'm not going to try to spell. Then he informed me, through tears, that the canyon was "a metaphor for our relationship."

The canyon is a canyon. I told him so. He didn't care. I love that he didn't care.

Here's something I've figured out about Ethan: he feels everything, all the way down, out loud, with his whole chest, and he isn't embarrassed by it anymore. He used to be. When I met him he was holding himself so tight he could barely breathe, terrified of being seen by anyone. Watching him stand in the middle of a national park bawling at a rock formation in front of forty strangers, completely unbothered — I don't have a good enough word for what that does to me. Proud isn't big enough.

I kissed him right there on the trail. Out in the open, people walking past. A year ago neither of us could have done that. We did it like it was nothing.

It gets to be easier. Nobody tells you that part.

— J