Letter to the one who changed everything

So ordinary. Buying a ticket at the movies. Then, a touch, a soft greeting. I turn, and there, after thirteen years and everything else, you.

A brief mumble of pleasantries. I soak in the sight. Healthy, radiating. Your hair a shade lighter. Energy not so frenetic.  

“Nice to see you,” you say, eyes direct. “Likewise,” I breathe, pinned to the spot. Nothing remarkable except…your gaze lingers. Holds. No more than half a second, but enough.

Because now I know that I did not make it up. For however brief a time it was real. The glimmer of it shining in your eyes. The deep and exquisite recognition that made us us. In the space between heartbeats, our ineffable electricity. And then we detached. Back to our separate lives.

Yesterday morning I lived in doubt. This morning everything is much the same. Yet not. As you did back then, with your gorgeous explosions, today you have altered the landscape. I feel the shift as a void, the space where the thorn once lodged. The one I did not even know was there. The nagging question. The buried and irritant sense that I was not loved. Was not worthy of love.

Only now, after its removal, do I sense its shape and weight.

Perhaps you did not mean it, and maybe this is the next chapter of self-delusion, but I am nonetheless lighter today. Taller. Clearer. Calmer. And even though you will likely never hear it, I thank you out loud.

For the next few days at least, or until fresh erosions scour the surface of this morning’s belief, I will know that it was not nothing – if only for the time it once took you to say, “I love you.”