there was a tenderness reserved for me in her. like an eager extra setting at a table, still empty, as she yearned for my presence with dinner time inching impossibly closer. it was like she was playing house and she was smushing our two dolls together. she’d smile at me to pass her the salt and add a wink, because she can. building our own little sinkhole world in the middle of her parents’ dining room. i couldn’t hear her mother ask me what i do for a living.

her family would be delightfully curious of the kind of person who could hold their precious girl’s love and attention. i’d tell them who i was in a nutshell, but she giggled at what was purposefully left unsaid.

they knew the her before me, and the her after me was beaming light to land planes. before, they said, maybe she could just power a small town. the spark in her eyes was threatening to jump the slight curb of her waterline and light everything aflame. she would laugh as we tried to put it out and she’d pull me away running like accidental arsonists.

afterwards, hand in hand, we’d sit on her back patio and laugh a belly laugh. nothing was really funny, just life was electric and it made a sound.