Humans. We desire this inexplicable feeling of adoration when we see that one remarkable person that holds our fragile heart with only their index finger and thumb.
Firstly, the phase of watching her attend prayer group, converse with demure friends, the way she runs her thumb over her pocket bible. You watch him attend the principal’s office, strut past the darling girls like they’re any old fire hydrant, the way he runs his hand over the beaten leather of his mustang’s steering wheel. Both humans realizing that one of them must take a tremendous step toward the other.
You smile, they smile.
Then the butterflies emerge from their chrysalis, clambering and screaming to escape your stomach so that they might find love just as you have. How does she understand you so precisely? How does he finish that sentence with the slightest of ease? You can comprehend a whole novel by that one facial expression they just formed. Subsequently, commitment
like no other human has ever seen wafts into this blossoming relationship like the aroma of sickeningly sweet perfume that is doused on love letters. She pays no mind to the boys that fawn over her. He doesn’t even glance when the most flawless girls walk by. You are so tightly fastened to one another that no jar or jolt can ever shake you. Until the way you are joined with one another begins to feel a bit constraining.
They say that a breath of fresh air would be nice. The perfume and masculine scent goes from sickeningly sweet to nauseating. The disarming way they say your name makes your heart wince instead of fluster and flutter as it used to. But there is an art to balancing time together, time apart, time again. You learn to work with the flaws of one another that you adore so dearly and cannot live without. That one human that not only holds your heart but your lungs, too.

B. Stechert