Bishop: Akosua Renee Bamfo, will you have, This Black Man, to be your wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony; will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep yourself only for him so long as you both shall live?

Akosua: I do.

I love you.

The moment I laid eyes on you I knew I wanted to know you. In fact the first person I told was a mutual friend of ours. I asked her “Who is that?!” and she said it’s just You. From the beginning, there was always a powerful energy. A feeling like we needed to speak. We needed to share vibes. We needed to share something. I found myself wanting to expose parts of myself to you without having known you in real life at all at that point.

This is how I know, I do.

I do for you, not because we have committed our hearts this far. But I do, because I did the moment I met you. The moment I blushed behind bronze cheeks to introduce myself and you forgot my name and we can’t even remember the event where we first met eyes. I knew this was something special. This is something worth fighting for. Love, sitting up for hours under the moon, watching nature unfold behind us as we shared our passions amidst a playlist I curated is my favorite memory. It’s the one I hold the closest to my heart because it is the rawest. Raw in the sense that we were both just two kids. Two kids eager to be around each other. For no other reason than that we were curious. I was curious about you for a while. Silently I grew closer to you and I looked forward to your simple yet profound messages.

What we have managed to create and somehow sustain is a love I never imagined could exists. There has never even been a movie made to depict a love this great. This is the love I was always unsure if I would ever experience. And I know it to be love because it feels as important as breathing but as complicated as being. It feels good to know I have someone in my life that gets my purpose, sense of humor and also my sense of sadness. We might be the most depressing people I have ever encountered and yet we’re full of joy. You spread it and I spread it and I know this because I see how people look at you. And I feel how people look at me. The vibrations are similar. And I’d just like to say I never anticipated it being this easy to look this good on the most beautiful day with animals running around outside. The sun’s setting. And I’m standing in front of my best friend who is looking ultra fly, I must say.

I couldn’t imagine what it’d feel like to say, let alone write, these words. Words are important to you too, so I wrote these for you. Because I know you know they are imagined for you. Love, it is always fleeting and yet we are always here. Near or far, I will be running with you. We will be running and sliding and dancing and cha-chaing or swag-surfing or doing whatever it is we need to do to survive here. And it will be beautiful. because we will be going through life together. We will be experiencing what it feels like to move with the wind and also get knocked down by it, together.

In typical Sua fashion, or should I say style, I’m having a hard time ending this. Not because I don’t have the words, but because there is no full stop at the end of one of my “I love you’s” so I guess I’ll leave it just like that; I love you