And today I feel like a gambler rolling lucky sevens! I got it! But I’ve got the good sense not to test it again! This will do! This will hold my heart! All these austere personal changes before 2020 can start! I can head into them with the remembrance of her look in my mind. I don’t need to look again – but I probably will – until at least a new week will start! I don’t want to chance it. I don’t want to lose what I got! Because … well … I got it!! It’s the actual feeling of holding your very own heart in your precious hands. Will it come? Even if accidentally? Even if it’s for some guy in Toledo? Because we can work with that! Any kind will do! And that feeling, as silly as it is, I know, when it doesn’t arrive. When it’s grey. And you stand there kind of motionless, looking out into nowhere, and the sound of when we return … it all fades into a muffle, and your heart slips out from your hands. And you try to buck up. On those days. When you’re rolling blanks. You take some inner inventory. Where do we begin? You self-talk. “Hey! You’re a swell guy, right?” “Well, sure! And thanks for saying so!” “You live for a look from her. Say, that’s normal, right?” “Oh, sure. People are doing it all the time! It’s the latest craze! Not crazy at all!” “Not even a little bit! And you know she wanted to.” “Well, of course! You can’t get it every day! Not all the time …” So you hope for the bliss, and you prepare for the blue. So you don’t expect it at all. Nope! Not even a little bit! But then, well, there is a day like today! You’ve rolled lucky sevens! And your soul finds something in her eyes. And the world gets as silent as a house minus a mouse on Christmas Eve. Because you *feel* it. And the noise around you, of house cleaning, and dogs barking, and a bird squawking, and laughing in Brazilian and some Boston slang, it all fades into a quiet, and all while it still goes on. The thrill divine that tingles your spine. This surge! A tidal wave of warmth gently extends about the room. And it actually feels as if a powerful angel tenderly and softly enters into your body. And she clears the space. And she rejuvenates. This actual cleansing of your soul. You don’t use a thing, but you know it’s better than any high in the world. You’re aware as it happens. You hear yourself talking and answering questions, and still you don’t hear a thing. It’s some automatic part of you doing the deliberations. The real you, somewhere deep inside, is dying a blissful death before a rebirth. You’re surrendered completely to all her magic. She is dressed in holiday plaid. It matches her warm sanguine hair. She is a vision that pierces through your being. I mean, you *feel* it. Tangibly so. If you let it carry you all the away, you’d lose your balance and fall over. And your mind scans its mental dictionary for words. But there are no words to be found. Nothing that *touches* what it is she does. But you think of snowfalls and sleds. And mittens and gloves. You allow a picture of her looking up at you, her gloves clutched around the lapel of your jacket. Her eyes of such a beauty it’s where souls long to go. And so pure and blue you could almost fall inside. And you see her breath. In the cold, where all is warm inside. She could toy just for fun, and give you a look and let go, and walk off cooly, without even having to turn around. She knows you’ve fallen when she hears the thump to the ground. Or the snow. She so effortlessly can collect a heart! We’ve all heard of women who can do that. But when you’re on the receiving end of it, you know the why and what of how it feels. It’s when you love someone so much at first sight, that it’s as if you feel every cell of your body sigh and let go. She owns you, whether she wants you or not, and you don’t even try to fight it. Every part of you indeed must let go. It must be like that divine release when that final end is near, and all is sad, and then the person on the way suddenly lights up and the eyes are bright. They see something the living don’t, and they are suddenly filled with this tear-filled bliss and they want to let go. Except I’m still alive! But something so tremendous changes inside. That’s really how it feels, to simply look into her eyes. To imagine that you’re seen. By her. She’s the most beautiful woman in the world. It’s a sentence written over and over again, and it frustrates you, because sometimes there’s no better way you know to put it. You’d simply die for her. You’d live your entire life for her. You’d be her gopher. You’d carry her bags. And you wouldn’t care less what voices deride. Just anything to be close to her. To care for her, in whatever way allowed. There’s no goal. Any jealousies and baser emotions you’ve wrestled from your soul. That’s all carved away in you. You once wrote you’d love her in the way a puppy loves her master. The puppy doesn’t care where you’ve been, or with whom. She just waits, tail always wagging, for whenever she returns. Any self-help guru would say, “For goodness sakes, have some self respect, boy!” But you’re a step ahead. When you’re carried by the look of her, you’re freed from your own nonsense. Why would you want to agitate yourself with all that me-business, when all you’re feeling is so profound? This love. This bliss! Whatever would I ever want to replace it with? No other feeling has ever come so close. Or embraced every part of me with such a totality. That’s how it feels for a man when a woman has the power to so effortlessly collect a heart. It’s the feeling of a puppy finding her way home after being lost for oh so long. It’s the feeling of where a heart has always longed to be. For centuries, time out of mind, and eternally. There are no conditions or unless-es or buts or let’s-sees. Even if you’re a vegetarian and she’s eating chocolate covered insects – there’s a new collection of words for the day! – you’d still gaze at her, your heart – your love, pouring over, maybe finding the words to ask, “do you want salt on that?” You adore everything about her. And there’s not a single thing that could ever occur where you would say, “Well, okay, that’s all, I’ll stop loving you now.” And maybe that’s what love is after all. No signs or conditions or goal posts. It’s simply what you do. When it’s all of who you are. You’d give her all the love in the world. And if the world ran out, you’d find some more, you’d venture into space, no matter how far. When you see her, when you think of her, love is all you’re made of. It’s all you’re aware of. You have this endless store. It’s all got to go somewhere. Why not back to this one you adore. Back to the source. Back to her. Her beauty. Where it can all spin around. This love that propels and utterly lifts you off the ground. You’ve never felt this way before. The way it used to be, you don’t want to return. Who would go from Technicolor back into a tinny kinescope of black and white? All over some ego and pride of how love should be defined, or over what’s wrong or what’s right. You feel it, you love it, it’s where your soul yearns to be. That’s enough. It has to be enough. There’s no ‘but only if you love me’. It’s love. It’s all encompassing. It doesn’t know the rules. It’s taken over you. You always feel it. For her. It inhabits you. It never asks for a thing. Her look, her unspeakably beautiful look, when her eyes rest this way, when a smile arrives that lights the corners of her eyes, that alone will do. And you carry your dice home in your pocket. It’s a cold near-winter’s day. But it’s lucky sevens through and through. ❤️ Filled with love, you only wish to say thank you. Thank you for all you do.  ❤️