My lover and I first met in a world of words. I hailed him from a distance because his name – Siegfried – intrigued me. I had images of Wagnerian princes with magic swords, but he chose to appear as a regular guy. After flirting with him for a while, I depicted a red clown nose and put it on him. He laughed and pulled a never-ending clown handkerchief out of his pocket. I knew then that I would seduce him.

The next day, he invited me to tour the Tudor mansion where he lived, alone.  When I commented upon the Degas prints in the hallway, he told me about his dance career, his words pirouetting around my head until I became dizzy. I did not care if his words were truth or fiction – his imagination was what interested me.

Of course, when I saw the grand piano I had to sing for him. I gave my most melodramatic rendition of Pamina's aria from The Magic Flute, expressing how I wished to sound. We made love underneath the piano, and the caresses of his words delighted me.

On another day, I invited him to the sparsely furnished room I referred to as my convent – a name intended to deter male attention. I always preferred to choose my lovers, and I detested being propositioned. Siegfried was lucky, I told him, to be among only three men whom I allowed into this room. When he told me he loved me, I reprimanded him. Did he not realize I was a figment of his imagination?

In another story, I was building a magical forest with a different lover. Every tree grew from the fertile soil of my mind, each word to describe the forest planted just so. My fellow forest-builder asked me to marry him in front of many friends, and I was afraid to embarrass him by saying no. After all, it didn't really matter. He and I both knew that none of it was real. 

Siegfried heard about my marriage from God, my boss at the time. My lover wrote his own place in the new story – not a mansion, but a monk's cell where he sulked alone. I described a colorful quilt and took it to him to keep him warm. My marriage changed nothing between us, I argued. We would write a new story together, one in which I would commit myself to him. What I did in other stories was my own business.

I was wrong. My feelings for Siegfried could not simply be contained in a single story. I lost interest in my other lovers, including my hastily married husband. He and I parted on good terms, though he worried for me. I wasn't the carefree person I had claimed to be. I was becoming attached to someone, and that, in this land of illusion, was dangerous.

Siegfried and I re-described his lonely cell into a chalet, complete with a mountain range and a baby goat that would never grow older. The story we wrote together was a happy one, but our feelings began to overflow from its pages.

And so we held hands, took deep breaths, and together, jumped out of the book. I have never regretted this. 

From the world of words where I found Siegfried, I learned that no matter how alien the soil, any contact with another may send out shoots that grow into strong vines. This forced me to admit what, in my heart, I already knew:  one can have sincere emotions in an imaginary landscape. To make things real, Siegfried and I had to torch the libraries of our former existences. 

Now, our lives are so thoroughly joined that it is hard to believe we first met in our imaginations. The forests around us grow wild, unplanned by our hands, and we have to drive for hours to see mountains. We caress each other with our hands instead of with poetry. And never again will I take lightly an exchange between myself and someone else reading my words from far away.