I’m set up for someday. ❤️ There’ll be time for kisses in the rain. My God, how beautiful it is. This promise hanging on a thread. It wakes me up softly in the middle of the night. To see it dangling there. In front of me. Reminding me. Swinging quietly like a pendulum in the night. I’ve never loved anybody like you. The way I love you. The way you are. Where every good thing that’s said is true. And the rare hurtful thing, you ask? “I lied,” I’d tell you. “I felt I had to protect myself.” This love comes in sunshine. It’s light I’ve never known. So big and so bright. Once in a blue moon, there is a storm cloud, too. When it’s all overwhelming and I’m overwhelmed with fright. Those are the times I close off for fear I’ll disappear and whither away. It burns my eyes. It carves me out from the inside. It’s the most I’ve ever felt alive. You peek out from around corners. Your eyes, they dance. I’ve never seen anything like it! Not in my whole life. You’re the one who changes everything. In a life. I’m happiest when losing myself in you, so I don’t have to think of the ways I’ve lost you. The promise is still hanging by a thread. I see it swinging there, and I kiss it tenderly, like a sacred medallion. And I hold it to my heart. So instead of it swinging, it can move to a beat. On days like today, well, there’s nothing to say. Not really. But I love being in the dream of you. You move to your own rules. You say a lot of things. But I swear I know when you’re bullsh—ing. My heart knows what you are saying. The heart doesn’t lie or fib. Even when I don’t look at you, my heart peeks around the corner. It catches feelings of you. The fire has been tamed. Not extinguished. Oh, never! This fire will never die. Even when I do, it will go on. It’s just where I choose to reside. This incredible love of you. I see you, and I have never felt so alive. Some days it’s all in the memories. Ghosts. If a child ever asks you if there’s such a thing as ghosts, I hope you say yes. I’ve seen so many. Let them know that most are friendly. They’re angels playing dress up on Halloween. I feel like a ghost today, haunting this 200-year-old house in a bathrobe. I’m so quiet my feet hardly make a sound as I travel. Losing thirty pounds has helped. Being the addictive type – and that goes triple for food – the only thing I ever want more of is you. So all those other desires have slipped away. “Oh, God, he loves living this way!” Reminds me of a soup commercial from 1974. Ethel Merman’s “husband” asks her what’s for lunch, and the kitchen pallets swing out to reveal a stage – replete with dancing girls and glitter. And she belts out something about the Great American Soup. It’s a real showstopper. After nailing the big final note with gusto, the dancing girls are gone, and the kitchen pallets return. It’s a typical American kitchen again. And her husband has never moved. From his seat at the table. Pure silence. And then he mutters, “Ethel. Do you have to make a big production out of everything?” I’m Ethel when it comes to you. For her, it’s soup. For me, it’s you. It’s spectacular, it’s life affirming, it’s soul reviving, it’s cataclysmic dying and being born again! And, by God, the world needs to know!! All that! Just from seeing you!! When I sing your praises wildly, it’s like my heart is going to leap out of my throat! When I say I’m now a “cheddar” guy, I’m lying through my nose. I peek from around corners. And I see or hear what I’m afraid to know. But I stand there and take it. And you know something? It doesn’t hurt so bad. Well, it hurts a little, but it’s okay. Like Rocky staggering on the mat, and saying, “That all you got?” Not saying it to you, but to the world. No, not the world. To his spirit. To his demons. And angels, too. I feel it, but the fear of it is ten times worse than the feeling it. And it gets absorbed, into everything else. And I swear I come out stronger. I’m becoming the person I always wanted to be. All because of you. I have no designs on you. No grand plan. My greatest hope to be your friend. To get that moment! Where you say, “So, what’s your goal?” And I say, “This.” And you smile. Just getting to spend a little time with you. To be near you. To be lost in your eyes in person. Maybe if not a romance, perhaps the greatest friendship of all time. Like all this is the first hour of an epic movie that spans decades. And someone hits the fast forward button. And in the fourth hour, there’s you – still beautiful always to me – picking up a phone. And there’s me – not quite as beautiful as you are by far – answering and gently saying, quietly whispering, “Hello, friend.” And anyone can tell *so* much has happened in between the now and then! I’d always feel this way for you. I always do. There’s no one else in the world who does what you do. I never thought it out. Big surprise, as you can tell. I saw you and I knew. To the point of letting someone rough me up, because I had to, and only thinking as it was happening, “Well, this is something new.” It’s all trivial stuff. Minor annoyances and inconveniences. In the hope of someday earning the right to say I know you. To get to that chair that is placed by an end table with a phone. A guy has to do what he’s gotta do to get there. Picture a stage. “Places!!” they yell. And a spot is lit on a comfortable chair, and there’s that end table, and that phone, right beside it. But all that is heard is a scattered cough or two in the audience and the ruffling of a paper program. There’s nobody there. Somebody missed the “Places!” call. And I can’t be there to take the stage, if I don’t put my heart on the line to get to where I can meet you there. Maybe someday. Maybe someday so very far away. I just want to love you. I don’t have to be beside you. I don’t have to be anything at all that goes by a definition. I saw you and I just knew. That I would always love you. It was the biggest thing in the world to ever happen to me. I never even questioned it really when it happened. I only try to explain it for those disbelieving. The feeling comes with a feeling of “this happens all the time – you’re just lucky enough to be experiencing it” – built right in. I don’t question magic anymore. I’ve lived it. That doesn’t mean I believe it will have the typical happy ending. But if it were to end right now, I’d feel nothing but grateful. I do, anyway. Sure, I bitch and I moan. There’s that rare storm. Even the sun needs a day off once in a while. I have my moments where pride comes roaring out from inside. It’s when I shouldn’t have a typewriter. And yet there have been so few of those. Maybe three out of one hundred and sixty-four essays. That’s not a bad ratio! Even in those three, I’m just so overwhelmed and I feel that jealously grab me when I’m most off guard, and I react selfishly. Like an adoring animal who jumps over another one, to be the one to receive your attention. Your smile. I wish I could say all the things it does to me. I received a heartwarming smile from a pretty girl yesterday, while walking Jakey, and I smiled back. Not even a little insecure. I have a quiet confidence now I never had before you. I smiled back and kept the eye contact. And waved. And someone trotted by and asked why I wasn’t wearing a mask. And I smiled and said, “F—k you.” No!! That very last part didn’t happen!! But I thought it. She smiled. She even stopped. And I smiled back. But I was thinking about you. You’re always with me. Just as you are. It’s how it is. And I’m not complaining. I love it like this. I don’t have to let a dream hang a thread. I softly kiss it like a sacred medallion, and hold it in an inside pocket. Where it can rest to the sound of a heartbeat. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve even known. Daring to say, perhaps, but my heart insists I do. Know you, that is. Something that happens when eyes meet. Conversation and small talk and all else that happens – is just filling in. Where no blanks are to be found. It’s all stuff that dances around the connection, that is stronger than the strongest material of this world. It’s already there. The rest is just a filling in. “What’s your favorite color?” “Purple.” “Oh! Me, too!” … “Who’s your favorite performer?” “Beyonce.” “Oh! Me, too!!”  … “Who’s your favorite person?” “You.” “Oh! Me, too!! … Oh! I mean *you.*” … It’s just filling in the ohs. If the rest of my life is a repeat of these days up to here, that’s no penance. That’s no hell. Seeing you is the happiest I’ve ever been. 3 out of 164 isn’t so bad. You fill me with so much love, it can’t help but spill into other things. I put my trust in something bigger that I’m in good hands. I love you so. I saw you, and I knew that was it. And every day has been learning all about what “it” is. I’m not the central character, even when it feels that way. But I’m given the gift of losing myself in you, so it doesn’t matter. Someday faraway. If you ever need a friend, please know I’m always here. For you. With no expectation. Without exception. I’ve closed so many doors, I’ve simply lost count. There’s forever a light by this one. If ever you need to hear a voice on the other end of the line. Somebody you are sure truly loves you. Who will look the fool. Who will get roughed up and not say a word, because he can’t. Who will take an ordinary life, and put it aside. And dive right into the soup! Because he saw you. And sing about it like Ethel Merman did. And know it was all little stuff, to get to the something big that is you. That ordinary life doesn’t stand a chance next to somebody so extraordinary as you. What feels a million words at this point, and still there’s always something new to say. All of it to get to that seat on the stage when they yell, “Places!” To be there to answer that call of yours if ever the phone should ring. In a world where everything changes if one waits long enough, this runs on a feeling of “I saw you, and I knew.” Anything that ever happens around it, is just the filling in. What never happens is okay, too. I’m blessed in this life to have seen you. I’m set up for someday. And I’m carried by something bigger than I am. I trust it’s the most beautiful story ever told, even if it ends today. But I have a funny feeling there’s more to go. I’m complete already. Some days I just need to remind myself. But if ever on some especially cold day, you feel it somewhere in your heart to send that look of yours my way, that alone makes it all worth it. The feeling your eyes give to mine. It’s worth everything. I’ve got a medallion in my pocket. There’s something in my eyes. That was never there before. All because I saw you. ❤️  

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*Thanks for being there!! Video coming by May 10. “THERE SHE IS!!” a book about the beauty of seeing that certain someone who changes everything inside of you – is available in e-book and paperback (search “todd demartinis” on amazon). Hoping it’s a magical weekend for you! Thank you!! You’re beautiful. ☀️😊