I was falling in love with her as the sun was falling in the mountains. We swam in the current of a secret stream. The leaves were a whisper on the pond’s edge and the mosquitos relentlessly pursued our flesh. But even the mosquito’s bite was romantic in the company of two chattering Kingfishers.

For the past two weeks, I had an ache in my knee that only went away when wrinkles formed on her eyes, a smile on her lips.

She was lovely and I was confused. She sat before me, but was she not an ephemeral being languishing in the liminal no-space between here and there, a mountain and an ocean?

When she told me she liked my best friend, images of the previous night flittered about, gently poking me. The three of us juggled together in a mountain field. A beautiful lightning storm joined us, milling about in the foothills of a Boulder night sky. Warm thunder moaned. I ignored it. Eventually, it started to croak and sneer, begging for me to listen to a wet childhood grief that drenched my body. I went from calm to afraid in all but a moment. The fear was a somatic embrace that greeted me as it would an old friend. 

I loved him. And more than anything else, I wanted him to experience happiness. The rich and full, gentle yet salient love she offered. And I wanted her to experience the warmth of the love I’d felt from him. Sitting on the sunsetting bench, I tried to ignore the thunder of my heart as it started its mournful moan.

Later that night, when we kissed goodbye, I could feel myself falling between that slick and secret beauty that the poets write about. A timeless sort of hello goodbye as we greeted one another for the thousandth and first time. Closer and farther, she pulled and I pushed. She pushed and I pulled. Our lips danced with meaning. In that parking lot, we found moments that had been transcribed in a long ago past but written anew in the ink of a divine cosmic patterning. Moments for other lovers to rediscover thousands of years from now. A soundless melody that existed more in the body than the ear.

I couldn’t fall asleep that night. After a few hours of tossing, I found myself wide awake and my alarm clock read 4 AM. A phoebe called through my window. I slinked out of bed. 

When the three of us were together the next day, my knee ached again. Worse than it had in a while. When the wrinkles formed around her eyes, the pain stayed this time. I couldn’t hold her benevolent gaze, no longer did her smile heal. Just like the night of the lightning storm, my fear had come for me quick and hard. An embrace that ensnared rather than comforted.

He didn’t seem to notice. His eyes contained a light I’d never seen in them before and I knew he’d felt a semblance of the beautiful falling sun, the warm glow she projected. His cochlea didn’t register any thunder, not even a moan.

I guess I already knew he was less afraid of lightning than me. But at least I know I am comfortable making myself a loving home in the gentle puddle of a punishing rain. 

As she and I said goodbye, the wrinkles around her eyes formed for a final time. But they were different, questioning. We’d only known each other for two weeks, but she’d seen me more than he had. Perhaps the hello goodbye we shared in the car formed a cosmic ripple that resonated beyond the soundless melody and found its way into her wrinkling eyes, eyes that I now know aren’t just perceived but perceiving.