I’m sitting on the counter on a Monday night. A cold glass of rosé to my right as the pasta boils on the stove. Let Down by Michigander resonates off the white walls I seldom occupy. This is where we fell in love; somewhere between the second verse and the chorus. Somewhere between pine trees and nightfall. Somewhere between here and Roswell. The passenger seat of your car and the corner unit. The snowfall and the rainy season. 

It’s an era of my life more saturated than others. I remember the music that played as the blood pounded in my ears. I remember the weather that held me as my heart raced. I remember where we were, I remember the harsh cast of the lights. I remember every moment, in sharp relief, that came to pass as we fell in love.

They’re words I’ve carried within me like a sapling coming to term. They nursed in my warm blood for so long that the sharp edges dulled and their weight became familiar. How strange it is to encounter them out in the world. How odd to know them like this. I wonder when it will stop feeling like hot moonshine in my chest to hear them come from you. I love you. And now you know it. You love me. And now I know it, too. 

It’s funny, for the first time in my life, I was so deep in a feeling I didn’t have the words. Days that passed where the endless turning of my utopian heart didn’t spill forth with abandon. Clothes soaked and forgotten on the floor, I huddled against you from the rain in your tee shirt. We were too involved to notice the sky falling. We were too far gone by the time the lightning struck.

Easy days turn into easy nights that become easy days I greet like old friends. This is where we fell in love. In an unfamiliar place that you think should cause us to disagree by now and I feel like I’ve always occupied somehow. Could it be this easy? we both think. The two of us making off like highway robbers at a life we both earned. Glancing in the rearview for flashing lights over the simple truth that some things are just good. And why shouldn’t that happen to us? I’ve known enough of bad fits to not squirm now that I’ve found a soft spot. Every time I feel the fevered itch to scratch at the supple skin that grew over my life, I tell myself the same thing I told you; don’t go looking for trouble.