Tonight I walked a trail I had not been to in years, the one where we had our first kiss on a warm October night in the woods —
As I made my way through the trees, alone this time, I thought back to that evening with you
How it was the very the first moment that my lips had touched anyone else’s, and how they chose to touch yours (twice)
In the parking lot after we hiked around the lake, as the greens and blues of the trees and the water popped with color —
The place where I told you why I love reflections so much.
Before that day, I had never gone into detail about why I found something to be beautiful, because isn’t that that the point — it doesn’t need to be explained or make logical sense?
In that moment I almost felt as if I had to convince you that it was pretty —
But I welcomed the challenge as an opportunity to share what beauty means to the eyes of this beholder, while also entering the brain space of another so different than I
To show you how amazing it is that “photographs of reflections look the same way upside-down as they do right-side-up, isn’t that so cool?!”
And to see how much it blew your mind, and how you saw into my world, too.
I knew you were so opposite of me in most ways, maybe that’s why I longed for you
But my god I was naive about just how different we were —
And yet, all of the qualities in you that were the opposite of mine, reflected back to me everything I needed to learn, just like that scene had reflected onto the water — so different, yet somehow one and the same.
I see now that it was our differences that expanded us the most — they were the reason why one year together felt like twelve, why hugging for a few minutes felt like an eternity,
And why every single day, you taught me more lessons about the world, about love, about life than I can even fathom or could have learned in a lifetime on my own.
First you taught me how to kiss,
Then you taught me how to love,
Then you taught me how to truly listen —
But the hardest part of all was when you eventually taught me what it means to care so deeply, so profoundly for someone you love
That you choose to let them go.