Love was When.....

Love was when...

I saw you for the first time, asleep on the couch. I knew, right then, that I would stay awake all night just to watch you dream, praying the sun would hold off a little longer before it broke the dark. I was so careful, so afraid to even brush the tip of your finger where your hand lay across your shoulder, content just to watch you from where I stood. I can still feel the shape of your smile in that moment, still hear the quiet rhythm of your breathing.

That sight has never left my eyes, even though the night itself never came back.

Love was when...

You called me for the first time, and said my name. No one has ever said it quite the way you did. I loved it so much that the sound of your voice, low and a little husky, still echoes somewhere in me, and I suspect it always will, even if I go deaf one day.

The warmth of your words still lingers in the air around me sometimes, and even now, it can carry me straight through whatever pain I'm sitting with, into a kind of quiet happiness.

Love was when...

We were walking down the lane, under the streetlights, sharing a cup of coffee, talking about nothing and everything. A car rushed past and you reached for my hand without thinking. It felt like something had pulled us together. We kept walking after that, saying nothing at all, letting the silence say it for us. That was when I understood, quietly and completely, that you were mine.

It was a day spent walking beside an angel who had wandered down to earth, and it left something in my heart that has never once faded.

Love was when...

It rained without mercy on your birthday. None of my friends would come out in it, so I rode alone through it to find the pendant you had wished for, all the way to the narrow lanes of Chandni Chowk and back to your door. By the time I reached you, I was soaked through, water running off my jacket, my shoes heavy with it. You looked at me standing there, drenched and a little foolish, the pendant held out in my hands, and you burst into tears and pulled me into the tightest hug I have ever known.

I have never, before or since, felt so completely loved.