‘I didn’t realise it would be this much fun’ she said, the spark of pure joy taking her by surprise. It had dawned on her that she had found her somebody, and it felt new and old at the same time.
Long before that, the love was there before she was even born. It was the first love available to her, and to this day, the longest lasting. It was there, as a hazy sense of her separate self began to grow, that she wondered at the power of this ancient feeling of belonging.
Other figures began to take shape around her, and alliances, betrayals and reconciliations were all practiced and learned between the only four citizens that existed. This was the first love she actively participated in. Between the ‘she said it fightingly!’ times and the moments of ‘will you mind me?’, she learned the act of it.
Then the outside world burst in with all its noise and chaos and full of other people who had other ways of love. So many unspoken rules that had to be learnt, so many wrong ways of doing things. And all the time, she was warily searching for a friend who had understood the rules the same way she did: a partner in crime. Forgetting of course that everyone was as terrified as she was.
She began to find her own way though, gradually encountering the people who she would spend time with, and accepting those who wanted to spend time with her. (Sometimes.) There was always the terror of discovering someone who didn’t, but time went on, and so did she, gathering her court around her, each candidate becoming part of a select group of very lovable criminals.
And one day, there it was. As if it had been there all the time, patiently waiting for the moment when she realised that he was him, and she was her, and they were them. The day she was telling a silly story, and he giggling at every detail. And so it is, there in the thousands of little moments: the tea and sandwiches after the swim, the stroll in the park and beers on the stoop, listening to a distant concert with the promise of summer in the air.
She had found her person, the one who could see her. The one who could see her fear and magic and shame and paid homage to all of it.
Oh, there you are. Sure it’s you, she said.
Maevid 2023
The Spacious Reverie 