Do you remember tall grass catching the sunlight
It sounded a little something like this
My skin touched yours and our hair floated in the sweet, salty breeze.
I felt us shift through a portal as you dipped into a side road and pulled off into the dirt with a lovely hum and crunch.
Your laughter fell like soft rain into the ground as you tried to light a match. A dragonfly murmured by, and time slowed down the way a river does around a bend.
I felt you watching me as you let me try. I felt you see me as I held a lit match up to my lips. Hands cupping around light. Funny how we cup our hands around something sacred. A small fish, a lover’s face, a shared snack.
How can I describe our brown eyes meeting in that moment? If eyes are the portal to the soul, I looked into yours and saw mine staring back at me. Is it the same for you? Sometimes it feels like we are a star that split in two. I have told you that meeting you felt like realizing I had been looking for you. We always talk about how there are more of us out there. Other pieces of star. I think about my favorite constellation - Pleiades. The seven sisters. There are legends that refer to them as little eyes or eyes of gods.
Some polynesians call them matariki, but on this island they are known as makaliʻi and when they rise in the east they signal the best time of year - makahiki. A time of rest and abundance. How much of both have you brought me since I have known you.
Is it selfish to love you when it feels like an act of love to myself to do so?
Perhaps that is just your nature. To love the way a plant breathes. Does love feel like taking a deep breath to you? Or is it more like the quiet rhythm of a heartbeat?
I am taking gulps of air as we breathe one another in. and out. and in. and out. Love is so like that. like the tide. like the gentle push and pull of time passing.
We are nearing the end of the river bend. Time is never slow forever. I stare at the end of the road and know we must go there. So we will go together.
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