“I just wrote it…you know?”

“What does it mean?” he asks.

She sighs quietly and stares at the night sky. What does it mean? The answers twist like a tornado in her head. If only you could see past someone’s eyes and into their brain. If only that would tell you what they really mean, what they really think, what they really want. But tornados in real life are not like tornados in the movies. In the movies, you can see houses and cows swirling towards the sky. In real life, tornados rip apart and destroy. Everything they touch breaks into pieces. Just like all the answers she wants to give. There are the answers she really has, the answers she wants to give, the answers she thinks he wants her to give, the answers she thinks he thinks she’ll give. Which ones are the right ones? Are any of them right? Are any of them wrong?

If only she wasn’t so scared. Scared the wrong answer might make him walk away. All she wants is to keep him close when life threatens to tear him away, like when a tornado peels houses from their foundations and trees from their roots. But if to keep him there, she has to keep him out, was he ever hers to begin with? 

“What does it mean?”

Tell the truth. All of it. All the time. If she tells the truth, he’ll stay for the right reasons. If he wants to, of course. If she keeps him out, he might not stay at all. Because in the end…letters are just pieces of paper. Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay. Keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.

This is what it means: you can’t love someone because you love the idea of them. You have to love them for what they really are. So tell the truth. All of it. All the time. If they stay, they stay. And if they don’t…