it was the knock at the door that drew you to me

fifteen years, heavy bags and flimsy folders

I saw you there, always a distance from me

too far away to touch, too close to ignore

school bells toll; you walked, I followed

extending leg, arm, and heart all the same

always dragging my feet to let you slip away

words seemed to die in my throat back then

swallowed away by the fear of knowing

and of being known by a strange new other

for I had learned this much by then

that people are safest as mysteries

as glittering fragments of all we know

left to glisten and shine from a distance

but when what we know is scarce

and we are starving

things change; time whirlwinds

and pushes me into you

so that you saw my face, and I yours

and our footsteps created a new rhythm

a matching tandem, a descent

but the mystery of you was kept alive

by my own delusions, by my silent voice

by my prying eyes and twitching fingers

and all I could not say, all you’d never know

I don’t think I could have known your face

before I knew your shirts, your shoes,

your sweaters, the jumping of your bag

on your back, the stomp of your sneakers,

the curls of your hair, the back of your neck,

your shadow on the concrete, your glasses

tilted, crooked, shining in the sun

but I came to know it all in years to come

and the mystery, somehow, never wavered

but instead unraveled like yarn from a spool

for miles and miles, even as I ran to catch it,

to keep up with how far it had tumbled away

knowing you now in the ways that I do

is like knowing myself; it is painful and hard

and terrifying and strange to swallow,

impossible to fully wrap my head around

yet it is also freedom, love and light and

heaven’s shine upon my world, a glimpse

of the beyond, of fate and meaning

a meeting of spirits bound to one another

through hard times and joy, through thick

and thin and messy and sweet and sour,

I turn to you, and I see you, and I know,

somehow, it will all be worth it in the end

sometimes I am sent back to when we

were strangers, sharing the same empty air

sometimes I miss the comfort of loneliness

of that sweet, familiar ache of unknowing

but then I think of your face

how your laugh reverberates through my mind when I think of what life means to me

how your smile stretches across the surface of my heart

to think I walked the same halls you did

before you knew my name or even my face

as I was tracing your footsteps on the tile

chasing birds away from under the sun

as I watched you walk down and away

a smile crawling up my mouth like sunrise

the wind in my hair, my eyes set on you

hoping to see and know something amazing

and as it stands, I do and always will

and I know now that what I sensed back then may have meant the world after all

feeling something rising in the distance

something like a wind caressing my face

and moving on, swirling its way down to you

making your head turn back

and your gaze meet mine

me, draped in the shade, still and smiling

you, in the sunlight, craning your neck

watching me watch you

as I was destined to do