I believe in God, because I believe in you. Neither came easily. I didn’t reject belief entirely, but I lived a life of muted passions, where passion seemed like a necessary precursor to believing in something. I want to say it was just the way I was born, but I’ve recently spent a long time in isolation to reflect. On how those passions were restrained, sure, but also on how they’ve been teased out over the years. It was soon clear that it wasn’t that I didn’t have love, but that I was denied love. It wasn’t until, separate from the narrow walls of home, I found you. I loved You. I didn’t know who You were. The concept of being in love was unfamiliar, to be honest. And maybe “in love” is a different experience than just having love, especially when the object of affection is more a concept than a Person, but I still think I prefer to characterize it so intimately, even where the tether of intimacy was unbound from any one person. But I wasn’t rid of my curse.

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I don’t know why the color drained from that love, but soon all the leaves flitted away.

For a long time I was content. I never actualized that loss. I tended to the wound with no expectations. I grew used to the aching. It always owned some part of my attention, and served as a powerful distraction from the many other injuries I’d sustain.

I realized during my isolation that I didn’t have the experience necessary to understand—the loss, the hurt, a recovery. I needed to understand. The slow beating heart was only beating slower, and it felt as though without a stronger reason than just survival, it would stop altogether. So my thoughts wander past the streets and lights, and my body drags along behind them, until the dim glow on the horizon is snuffed entirely.