Friday, February 14, 2020 // The Statement
4B
5B
Friday, February 14, 2020 // The Statement

ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE

Tiny Love Stories

Jacob threatens to order a pizza nearly every night but 
almost never follows through. We rarely share a meal that 
doesn’t send him into some vague gastrointestinal pain, 
except the sushi we once ate in a Toledo, Ohio bathtub (“I 
didn’t know sushi could be, like, a meal”). He once mused 
on the concept of chicken-fried steak to me for half an 
hour, then vowed to order it from every menu that offers it. 
He sends me a picture each time, an indecipherable sort of 
meat slathered with glue-colored gravy. “This will give me 
pain,” he usually says. 

Verity Sturm, Statement Correspondent

 

Chicken-fried feeling

One Sunday at the deli, my grandparents argue over 
what year they got married. My grandfather insists it 
was 1958, in the winter. My grandma says, “No Howard, 
it was 1960, the year Kennedy was elected.” They agree 
it’s impossible that all these years have passed. Look at 
this family we built. Look at these grandchildren. When 
my mother calls my grandfather, hoping he’ll accept help 
caring for his wife, he declines with pride. It is our job 
to take care of each other, he says. What a love that lasts 
through the years. What a love that transcends memory, 
that just comes to be.

Emily Stillman, Deputy Statement Editor

Sunday at the Deli

I am one minute older than my brother. I existed on 
Earth for 60 seconds before he decided to join me — slow 
poke. Some twins might recount this story with bitterness, 
upset that their sibling stole the birthday spotlight, but not 
me — not us. Alexander and I work as a team; we always 
have. He knows that I secretly enjoy the dumb texts he 
sends me, including the time he crashed my computer 
by pasting 100,000 heart emojis in one message, and he 
knows how to give me a real hug when I need more love 
than an emoji can send.

Zoe Phillips, LSA senior

My (literal) other half

Running into the coffeehouse — book bag open, hair 
stuck in my mouth — I blurted out an apology: “Sorry I’m 
late, I’m coming from the courthouse … A protective order 
… it’s fine,” I tried to reason. His eyebrows scrunched with 
annoyance, softened into concern. He was at a loss for 
words, I assumed he felt awkward. Most people did. But he 
tried to comfort me: “Don’t worry, I’ll handle the project.” 
After an hour of coffee and laughs, I left lighter than I’d 
felt all week. A year later, I found my way back to him. I 
still run late, and he’s still taking care of me.

Julia Fanzeres, LSA and SMTD senior

Our first meeting

I love like I season my dishes: intense, 
flavorful. I like to stir myself up like I stir my 
homemade leshta, churning my insides with 
made-up scenarios that burn like hot manja on 
the roof of my mouth. I am not a chef: I drop 
water-filled pots, mix the wrong ingredients, 
forget rice on the stovetop, watching it curl on 
its ends, charred and defeated. But I always 
start over, feeling hope between the gentle 
leaves of fresh spinach, and hearing whispers 
of good luck in the soft sifting of lentils. I am 
not a chef yet, simply a cook trying to master 
this intangible, frustrating, heartbreaking 
craft.

Magdalena Mihaylova, Statement Managing 
Editor

Cook, not chef

Ty and I were never supposed to meet. 
He grew up homeless in New Jersey, while 
my Michigan suburb bubble-wrapped me in 
privilege. He’s Afro-Latino and I’m white. We 
met studying abroad in Costa Rica, where he 
taught me to dance bachata, and I taught him 
to play ukulele. Having escaped the social 
structures keeping us apart in the United 
States, we quickly fell in love. Six months, 
two countries and three states later, learning 
is still our constant. As we unwrap the layers 
of our opposite worlds, cycles of poverty 
and privilege, what we’ve uncovered is that 
there’s always more to learn. 

Hannah Brauer, Statement Columnist

From opposite worlds, united abroad

A kind word from a stranger on the walk 
to class. Finding out someone loves that book 
and author, too. The sound of their laugh — 
pure, spontaneous, an accident that almost 
didn’t happen. A shared copy of “All The 
Light We Cannot See.” Thin upstrokes and 
downstrokes: calligraphy pen against paper. 
Pale blue hand-me-down picnic blanket on 
dewy grass, soft. Running to catch the sunrise 
even though you have already captured a 
thousand more. Twirling the curls in their 
hair, wanting them for myself. Firecrackers, 
the lingering smell of incense hanging in the 
air, a flickering spark in the darkness.

Quinna Halim, LSA freshman

A (tiny) list of things I love:

No more are the days I would meticulously record each 
calorie I ate, the days I would cry over the extra weight 
on my thighs. Long gone is that Sunday in March when I 
landed in the hospital from a self-induced iron deficiency. 
Now I eat to my heart and stomach’s content, a symbolic 
thank you to my strong legs for carrying me from class 
to class and through mediocre self-choreographed swing 
dancing routines on a Friday summer night. Today, I love 
my every stretch mark, curve and dimple of my imperfectly 
perfect being. In my twenty years, this is the greatest love 
I have yet to know.

Anonymous

The greatest love

Homemade leshta, before being drowned in paprika.

Love that lasts longer than lifetimes.
On a trip to Traverse City over fall break.
Sharing a plate of sushi, not in a bathtub this time.

At a dance club in Costa Rica.
Add making art to the list of things to love.

Two baby bundles are better than one.
A moment of freedom, strength and happiness.

