We met about six months ago.

Yes.

Perhaps not as we’d imagined but all things for a reason. We tried each other out. And we fit. Kind of. You had stuff and I had stuff and now there’s the stuff we have together—but it’s less like stuff and more like flimsy remnants of a cobweb fighting to be seen.

The entire time I was mindful not to let you in. You were just a guy whose house I ended up at so randomly and unlike myself. There were no expectations and with that came a hedonistic pleasure that I had not experienced before. You were the first man in four years to engage me, to make me realise that I was not born for celibacy and solitude—not when it comes to a significant other. Not when it came to you.

I had been mistaken to tread the path of spinsterhood so young.

Too often I do not say what I mean. I give way to silence, to long lapses in communication, and bite my tongue when the words want to break free and speak for me instead. If I wasn’t so stubborn I would perhaps have written this on a note and slipped it under your door like the others, but I’m not ready to let the hope of you go just yet. Maybe just one more time…

I might have written this:

I love the first time you kissed me, on the floor of your lounge with the incense burning as I turned my head back from checking out your surfboard with a million thoughts running through my head that ceased as your lips pressed to mine—warm, fleeting and wonderful. I wanted more.

I love breathing you in as though I could link forever the smell of you to your memory.

I love the view of the crook of your neck as sleep clamors for my attention, my fingers resting on your chest as it rises and falls.

I love the way your lips form words, especially when you talk of things that are important to you.

I love that you seek greater things than what is so easily before you. Sometimes being given the opportunity to explore what you want is a dance that feels like you have no music, no steps, no direction, no partner.

I love the imperfect things, the messy things—we are, none of us, perfect in this world and I do not seek to fix you, change you or demand your time.

I simply want to enjoy you, to know you, to explore the world with you. Not forever. Just for now—that is, after all, all we have.

In the end this has perhaps, and most likely, been something far more precious in my reality than in yours. In the end this may be nothing more than what has already passed between us.

Brief. Sporadic. Transient. Already gone. Never quite there. Not here yet.

Take me into the desert with you.

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Apprentice Editor: Ola Weber

Photo: Flickr/Courtesy of Malo Malverde