Sweater

I am in love with the man of my dreams, literally. There is a very real man with the same name and the same face living in a very real city thousands of miles away. Speaking to him was like writing poetry, like making love to love itself, like a little death. Of course I kept this all to myself when we spoke, at least, I tried to. He sold me a sweater.

What can I say? I know that’s not what you want to hear. I know you want to hear about a passionate exchange filled with innuendos both nuanced and audacious and maybe it was so but then again maybe it wasn’t. I felt what I felt and what I felt was nuanced and audacious. I asked for signs and found them. He sold me a sweater and he thought whatever he thought. I was very pleased with the customer service. Months later and that initial spark has taken on a life of its own. Whatever I felt then not only still burns within me, it has grown.

Had it been a crush it would have been swallowed up in the chaos of the world, in the chaos of my life, in all my triumphs and failings. It would have been beautiful and fleeting. Had it been an obsession it would have burned itself to death and me along with it. I would have moved on. I would have starved for want of air. I would be working hand over fist to fill myself up with stars again. I would be dreaming about no one in particular just as before.

While there must be an element of obsession in it (unshakeable, incomprehensible, intense), obsession is a void, and what I feel is a becoming, a sense of wholeness. What I feel isn’t simply esoteric. I also want him in the animal sense of wanting. I feel him in my bones. Under my skin. Inside of me. Sexually. Emotionally. Spiritually.

I admit that I made a few awkward attempts to lure him into a conversation. Attempts which were either too subtle or too obvious. I can’t tell the difference. I found him sincere in some untouchable, inscrutable way that I cannot explain. He got to me, in a way no one ever has and there is nothing I could possibly say to rationalize it. He changed my life without doing anything, simply by existing. How could any other man hope to compete with that?

Technically that wasn’t the first time we met. I met him at the end of 2019. I use the term met very loosely. I came across his photograph online. A 10 year old photograph from his modeling days. I wasn’t looking for him specifically, I was just looking for inspiration for a character. I didn’t even know him (in any conscious sense of the world), it was just a coincidence. I wouldn’t deconstruct my life for the sake of a gorgeous exterior. I wouldn’t usually even deconstruct my life for the sake of a gorgeous interior. Yet that is exactly what happened when I saw him, bit by bit, moment by moment I started to reconstruct my life. Not for him but for the fire he awakened in me. The contents of my life have all fallen out. The too tight threads. The scabs and the scars. The bloody lump in my chest. The charred moths in my belly. The unloved child. The anarchistic teenager who swore she would never settle for anything short of extraordinary. The somehow still anarchistic adult with cobwebs like constellations in her hair. I have become all of me. I am no longer a series of disjointed dreams and memories spilling over with melancholia, I am a whole universe of feelings.

I want to tell you a living, breathing love story. The story of two imperfect people, with two perfectly delicious souls, coming together in extraordinary and incomprehensible ways. I want to tell you about my dreams, the coincidences, the conversations spoken in silence. I want to say. Believe. Believe. Believe.

If reality ran only surface deep then all we’d ever know of our hearts is hunger. It is all in the way we love. Eyes opened. Eyes closed. Lips parted. Lips set. Palms skyward. Fists clenched. Heart free. Heart caged. In the end I would rather be defined by love. If you are wondering I haven’t said anything to him about any of this, at least, I haven’t said anything out loud about it. I am trying to just enjoy the feelings, the dreams, the coincidences, the magic, the fact that he exists at all in this world, that he exists in me because of how I feel about him. I would love to talk to the real man, the man thousands of miles away, the man who sold me a sweater and changed my life. Maybe I do talk to that man everyday in my heart and every night in my dreams.

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