Ten, maybe more, years into our relationship, J and I traveled to southeast Asia with my sister and her husband. While they had progressed to engagement and marriage, J and I remained in our relationship: in relation to one another, relatable for each other, sometimes unable to relate. At the Bayon Temple, Angkor Thom, Cambodia, something shifted in both our closeness and our distance, as if the space around us had not changed in size but in shape, letting us—or me, at least—see it new. Not too long after the trip, we too became engaged and were married.
“Married by a Monk” first appeared in print in the now-closed Tiny Lights. Today it reappears in Wanderlust. Hit the road with Sarah and company: Wanderlust is adventure!
Suzanne Farrell Smith 
Gorgeous. I love your essays so much.
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