My parents were engaged for five years, and married for twenty-one, but they never whisper sweet nothings, or go on their second honeymoon, instead they create arguments when the house get a bit too quiet and sleep in different rooms after a fight over nothing but my mom always smiles when she says we have driven her crazy, and everyone tells me the love letters my father wrote her every day she was away. Maybe they never say I love you, but my dad calls her the queen of his heart and more than once I have seen them dancing on new years to no music. My favorite word has always been you. y.o.u. But my dad says his favorite is jaan, which means, when translated, ‘the most important part of a heart.’ and I have grown up being called my father’s jaan. Maybe they never sat me down and warned me how cruel the world could be, but the way they watch Pakistani dramas on the same sofa and the way they gang up against my siblings and me in every game of carom board has taught me more about life than anything else ever could. They told me you know when you love someone when you miss them in their absence, and their echo is the sound of every inhale and exhale you take. And this has resonated deep in my bones and plucked wings from my veins. So know that I will go to sleep tonight and dream of the maroon red petals of the roses my father brings when my mom comes home from her job in Wisconsin, and know that my fingers will reach for the folds of the rust orange leaves that my mother presses into her diary from their annual trip to see the fall colors, and know that I will trace the word jaan all over my heart, and know that I will smile despite being in a constant state of missing you — y.o.u.