Falling in love

You look across the table at someone; you see something in the other person’s eyes that is at the same time strange and warmly familiar. You recognize in each other a family member, a kindred spirit. You have always been together, somehow, you know this, and you feel as if you have always known it. Yet, yesterday you were strangers, alone in the world and lonely, longing for love and joy and laughter. In the gap between yesterday and today is a profound mystery, the realization that one small difference in your daily routines would mean that you would never have met. If you hadn’t come to that party, if I hadn’t decided to go to that dorm social, if you had left school five minutes earlier I would never have run into you and we might never have started talking. And now, we are together and nothing in our lives will ever be the same. We are the same, and we are changed. I am yours. You are mine. We are for each other.
You are the planet I orbit. I am a moon, a small white satellite, my face turned perpetually toward you. Without you I am cold, aimless, lost. You give me shelter, light, grace, love. You feed me. I worship you. I want to throw away everything else just to be near you. I can’t get enough of your eyes, your lips, your vanilla hair. I want to drink you, eat you, wear you like a coat. I want you to keep me inside you always, so that I can see what you see and hear what you hear and go where you go. I cannot sleep without seeing your lovely face. I cannot rise in the morning without hearing your laughter. I wait for you, I watch for you, I pine and pace and fidget. I am useless, incapable of action, unmade, untethered. I am sick. I am robust. I am alive. I am sane, at last.
I could gaze into your eyes forever. When I look at you I see myself, the way you see me, and I feel jubilant. You see me. You want me. How did I live before you noticed me? Where were you? How did I manage not to notice you? Was I even awake?
We share a secret, the story of us. It is only ours, no one else can know it. We can tell the details of our meeting, of how you asked me to be yours alone, of how we kissed for the first time, of the time we first said “I love you.” But no one else can come inside the circle of our love, it is our universe alone. We walk, we sleep, we work, we play in the real world, but we dwell in our own private place, together and separate. We are fogged in but not stuck, sidetracked but not lost, adrift but not at sea, bewildered but not confused. We are perfectly matched, aligned, united. We understand. We know. What is inscrutable to everyone else is perfectly clear to us. We are a category unto ourselves.
Nothing more needs to be said. We communicate with a glance. We speak with a smile. Our love needs no words.