A story about love, which isn’t exactly a love story.

On the night we met I was running away. It was mid winter. A night like a hunt. Full of tigers. What had we killed to be here?

Our eyes met across a crowded room, as they tell you they will, if you believe in that sort of thing. And so often, what you believe in ends up happening to you.

I used to live in a faux fur coat of questionable origin; wide lapels of deep cream, a swing of a thing. The outfit your ghost would wear, if you could be bothered to come back; if you hadn’t decided where to go; if you hadn’t yet remembered what you believed in, depending on how you went.

I was drinking whatever beer you could find sold for less than a dollar and locked into an argument about Beat Poets, as was the style of the time.

He was a poet, too, then. Though anything you once were you often are forever. Now I know we’re all poets at heart. I’ve met enough people and heard enough stories to know that’s true for a good hundred years. But he said he was, promised it into something greater than himself.

I’d said I was a writer once. I’d hoped to direct my life down that road, not knowing yet that life knows where it’s leading. It wasn’t as true as that I wrote. That’s the funny thing about bravery. When you say: I don’t feel very brave, but I try very hard.
Something answers back: What’s the difference?

I fell in love with him twice a day for 6 weeks. We had the same songs in us. That was enough. Until it wasn’t.

Years later, someone asked me why I thought anyone would want to talk to God. I said; because people have questions they don’t want to have to wait for life to answer.