The Fall

He asked me once when I knew I loved him.

Should answer "at first sight," but that's too much of a lie even for me. It was a gradual falling, not an abrupt drop. I was eased over the edge before I realized I was even going anywhere.

The danger was first. I wanted the adrenaline of risking my heart on someone notoriously good at breaking them. I wanted to prove to myself that I could come through cold, hard, imperious. But then he spoke. He said things, true things, things that even the ones who were supposed to be honest lied about. I asked the hardest questions I could think of, and without faltering or avoiding he answered them all.

Closer to him, I teased with the idea of a brush of the arm, a smile through falling hair. Nothing, my coquetry left me feeling the fool. And then he spun me, to the inside of the road; and there I felt the stars on my skin and tasted taste Life on the wind. It was bitter and sweet and scary as hell.

Perhaps that's when I fell, or perhaps it was later when his eyes sparkled and he grinned that open dangerous mischievous grin. And later on, after the fall when hard times pressed us into shadows of ourselves, that grin remained.

Or maybe it was later still when he kissed me. It wasn't fireworks, it was slower then that and less flamboyant. It was simple and sweet and if people could melt I wouldn't have, instead I would have evaporated slowly and been whisked away on the night breeze.

When I slipped over the ledge into love, I was in a dream. I went to sleep and had wonderful vision- of walking along deserted roads, of the imprint of a phone on my ear, a Christmas of longing. I awoke to find myself comfortably In Love. I feel as if I have cheated somehow, missed part of the game.

But now I have a pillow that is actually a red sweatshirt and comfortable obsession with my phone. And hundreds of dollars are slipping through my fingers on planes and rooms and trinkets. And this is that Life that I once tasted and it's bitter and sweet and scary as hell.

And I am in love.