There are so many people to love. I constantly fall into this kind of ***** fascination: a wholehearted, genuine infatuation, as I learn the ins and outs of their beings.
I notice the way they talk with their hands when they're passionate about something and the way they stutter when they ask questions and how their knees bounce and their fingers tap and their pens click when they're nervous.
The way they smile the softest smiles when they're falling in love and their hands shake with anxious tension when they're falling out.
I see people and I want to know them.
I want to learn them and I want to love them.
I simply cannot understand anyone who would find it impossible to fall in love with someone in any short period of time.
I realized I loved him as soon as I watched him climb a tree.
His eyes squinted as he grinned- beamed- and took my hand. And I realized I loved him right then.
The periphescence lasted, burned in the pit of my stomach like a red flame for as long as we were sharing our worlds with the other, and perhaps even longer after he stole his back, shut himself inside, and locked the door.
I swear I banged on it for days on end, hands bruised and knuckles bleeding as I knocked and knocked and knocked and hoped that he might answer it one day, realizing he'd forgotten what color my eyes were or on which side my hair parted.
I was estranged from him for what felt like eons, lightyears, eternities- and not once did I forget the burn of his touch as he ran his fingertips down my back, or the way his right hand squeezed my left thigh as he drove.
I remembered- I still remember- the warm giddiness that accompanied him each time we came together and lingered, glowing and buzzing, within me each time he went away.
He is gone now.
He is long gone and I still remember.