2 months before, he began planning his speech. He wrote pages of poems and songs, trying to find the words.

3 weeks before, he started panicking. Every metaphor about sunrises and footprints seemed so trite and small.

2 days before, he was spending every waking minute trying to pick the perfect phrases, obsessing over every letter, every detail.

30 minutes before, speech in hand, the overwhelming fear of what would come next was paralyzing. What if he sounded cheesy or fake? What if she laughed?

30 seconds before, he suddenly realized what he was missing, the words that would perfectly capture everything he was feeling, what every muscle and fiber in his body was quivering and desperate to express, what kept his heart racing so fast that every rock drummer in history would be hard pressed to keep up. Everything came down to this. She was there. She was waiting.

He performed his speech in that moment. They were the 4 most beautiful words anyone in history would every say.

“Will you marry me?”