2012.

I posted a picture of a book on someone's Facebook wall. His first comment identified that we liked the same author. His second comment was a dry joke that made me laugh. His third comment was an explanation of his joke, in case I didn't get it. That made me smile warmly. We weren't even Facebook friends.

"They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered."

I had spoken to him once, years prior. I think I asked him if he needed help emptying a garbage can.

Light began to flow between us immediately after that. Thick strands of blinding illumination weaved and wound itself together. Around us. Every late night spent together was more pieces exchanged, more parts laid open.

He was...disarming. He didn't know it. Sure, he knew he was a handsome man, charming usually. But charm comes from conscious effort. Disarming another human is as if you've secretly snipped away the parts of their circuitry that allows them to guard themselves. Their gates are open and they have no idea. He walked right in.

Being with him was the easiest thing I had ever done up to that point. It might still be. It was here that I learned that ordinary things become extraordinary when they contain a trace of a person you've been bound to.

He made me do something once that I often bring forward in my mind. In a strange city, on a strange beach, in familiar sunlight. Without letting the world know how sweet, yet cheesy he could be, I'll just say that he had me get rid of all the negativity in my life. Toss it into the Atlantic.

It fell apart slowly, as these things often do. But it did indeed crumble. Our time had drawn to an end, and the palpable air of goodbye was present every morning until it finally happened. The fallout was messy. I was dramatic. Behaved like a child. In the years that followed, it has seen its on again, and off again.  We have not cut every strand of light. There still exists, one or two. Because they are effortless in existing. They cause no harm, they take up no space. And every once in awhile, he follows that strand to me, or I tug on my end and he feels it pulling. And we say hello. I know, and he knows, and we do not discuss.

I have long since let go of the idea of a forever person. I am, after all, an adult. But I do not know what will happen in the future. Maybe there is another time, another place. Maybe that's why we are still, ever so slightly, bound.

He was the first man that I tossed out my short, but still existent, list of "rules" for. To this day, I'm still glad about that. The list has never come back. I suppose in that respect, he is partly responsible for all the wonderful people I've shared pieces of myself with since...q