Often, I imagine you as you may have looked as a child: ample, with lush black curls and tan skin, your back turned to me. You’re a head below the kitchen counter, reaching up for something sweet.
The image struck me when you told me a story from when you were six: you had a pet parrot named Bingo, and you loved Bingo so much, you took him to bed for a nap, and you squeezed him so tight in your sleep that he never woke up. Now I make this joke, in situations where one might use the old "beating a dead horse" bit, only I say the topic is "buried in the backyard with Bingo," and you hate it, I think, but not enough that you wish I would stop.
Anyway, this little girl, laughing, playing, eating ice cream, loving the world to death, this miniature version of you, completely, entirely you, and none of me, looks exactly as I wish our daughter would.
She sleeps in our bed and eclipses the love we share. Everything we used to give to each other, we give to her. She’s the happiest little girl you’ve ever seen, and you want nothing more than to give her everything.
Her life begins and ends at age six; the film reel just loops, with no hint of how this character arrived or where she goes. I think if I can just get there, that maybe life makes sense in this way that we can’t explain but occurs to us in a way that we can understand.

Another time, I imagined asking you: if reincarnation was a proven certainty, and we both died, would you try to find me?
At the time, you didn’t understand the question, and I didn’t know how to ask it another way. Now I imagine asking: if we both encountered separate catastrophes, suffered amnesia and underwent reconstructive plastic surgery to our faces, bodies, vocal chords, anything our five senses could recognize about each other, do you think we’d find each other without even knowing we were looking?
But you still don’t understand. I thought if I used more words, you could think less—I’d do the thinking for you.
And in that vein, I stumbled upon a much more pressing problem.
The question that makes sense to you is, Are we soulmates?
Then, you don’t have to think about it at all.