Like Breathing

I felt him watching me as I came down the stairs that September day six years ago. His intent gaze kept on me as he took his seat across the room, missing the bench, but not the piano. His face turned a quick red as he struggled to regain the composure I never thought he could lose. I failed to hide a smile when his sister later confessed to me that he never made mistakes like that.

It had been six weeks since I met him then; six months since I knew I would marry him. This knowledge, difficult for many to understand, became a secret I learned early to keep to myself.

In the fleeting first days of our charmed acquaintance, I would wake and for the first time understand what it meant to have someone be my first thought in the morning. At home, I would sift through my roommate’s old yearbooks and scrapbooks, losing sleep because I couldn’t let go of his familiar face. I wanted to reach through the page and touch his cheek. I missed him. Even today, when I see those same pictures, I wonder where I was all those years before we met, resenting whatever kept us apart.

Only days would go by before time relinquished its control, allowing our relationship to become what it was always meant to be. When he held me, we fit like each other's last puzzle piece. I thrived on his touch and soon learned that kissing him could never relieve the constant ache I felt in his absence. Nothing ever made me weak in the knees like his lips did, rendering my body both numb and yet full of feeling all at once.

Marriage was inevitable. For us there was never any other option. To wait, to be without each other, was unnatural. It always would be. Six years, and I still don't feel right if he's not around.

Being with him, it's like breathing.