Puffy eyed sleepless I, did not fathom in a million years that I would look up to see you. I would like to say that hoping to run into you would be the same as the chances of taking the planet Earth apart into its every atom, stuffing it into a bag, shaking it, and hoping it will form back into the planet. One need not be a genius to figure this would be quite unlikely. However, in all truthfulness running into you was the only thing I ever had on my mind. In my head, I pictured trillions of ways I might catch a glimpse of you to quench my thirst for you.  Perhaps you never took me seriously whenever I said that I needed to know about you. This need is the same way a fish out of water needs oxygen. When you keep me in the dark, I am squirming on the ground, grasping for nothingness as long as I am out of the water.

Regardless of any divine celestial occurrence, destiny, fate, or my heart’s desire you were standing there across from me. I ran back into my truck and stuck my finger into the cigar lighter just to make sure this was not one of my trillion fantasies of seeing you again. “S***” yep I was definitely awake. Sore thumb and all, I poked my head out again and he was still standing there. He had changed in every way, yet not all. If there was anything good that came from this relationship, it was that we both changed each other. Perhaps we were the only ones to know it. Moreover, I was wholeheartedly fine with that because although our love was not the forever kind it was secretive –it was ours.

Freshman year he was all about hiding his Albert Einstein mass of curls. Slicked back tight to his scalp, he would become angry by the end of the day when they would start to frizz up. Look at him now, the curlies that I adored set free just the way they should be. And so it goes, we stood there pumping gas not even twenty feet away as though we were complete strangers.