for Beth
a love letter · est. november 2023
Beth
from the one who loves you most
times square · may 2026
the night the whole city looked at you
before anything else
My Beth, I have started this a hundred different ways, and every single one began with you. Somewhere between the first photograph and the last, you became the place my whole life points toward. So before the pictures, before the memories, before anything else, here is the one sentence I have never had to rewrite:
I love you.
chapter I · 2023 — 2024
Where it began
the first pages
chapter II
The holidays
all my favorite lights were you
chapter III
The adventures
zebras, horses, & your hands in clay
chapter IV · 2025
The everyday
my favorite ordinary days
chapter V · 2026
Now
still us. always us.
an incomplete inventory
A few of the ten thousand reasons
- i.the way you laugh with your whole body
- ii.how you glow in red, every single time
- iii.your hand finding mine without looking
- iv.the faces you make when you think no one is watching
- v.how every city we visit ends up looking better with you in it
- vi.the safest I ever sleep is next to you
- vii.that you have seen every version of me, and stayed
There is a version of my life without you in it, and I have no interest in ever meeting it.
You are the first thing I want to tell about my day, and the last thing I think about before it ends.
Loving you is the easiest thing I have ever done, and the one thing I intend to do best.
Every photograph here is a promise I already made, and intend to keep making: to choose you on the bright days, the heavy days, and every ordinary Tuesday in between.
It was always you.
I love you, Beth.
always & in every version of this life — your Joel
est. november 2023· forever to go