He Awoke me as I Slept on his Shoulder

It is said that people come into each other’s lives at a time when it is needed. I needed exactly him. 6’0. Tall, dark and handsome. A kind face. Warm smile. Brown eyes that penetrated me. A soul that collided with mine. “You have bewitched me body and soul,” I thought after our first date, somehow only able to find the words for my feelings from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a book I’d previously laughed at the cheesiness of. On our first dinner date, we talked for five hours and forgot to order our food for two of them. Couples came and went from tables around us, waiters bustled by, and we exited the clock of time as if the hands of Big Ben had stopped it--forgetting anyone was around us and entranced with each other. We walked the line of an all-encompassing romance, that can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t breathe type of love. But really, when his soul collided into mine, I was shaken; I realized I had bars over it—my soul. I think his heart had bars too, because what I felt wasn’t my heart on his, but a clanging of the bars of both of our hearts hitting each other, rattling our souls inside. Our intimacy was a meteor that slid right past the atmosphere--a near miss.

Regardless of the bars we spent time in drunk on wine and laughter, I ran into a soul quite unlike one I may ever meet again. He stirred me, steadied me, and awoke me as I slept on his shoulder. I am burning my last stick of the incense that he gave me...I realize the smell of it is attached to him. I wonder how many things are burned with attachment to him in my mind now. Will I see him in every lab coat? Will I hear him in every doctor’s visit? I will forever have burned in my mind the image of me sitting topless in the white chair in my room with only the candle burning and him sitting in front of me, staring at me with eyes that looked glazed with anesthesia, as if I was doing a procedure on him—carving into him, opening him, transcending his brain with the deep thoughts I usually kept tight. He passed me the cigarette. As we talked, I felt my bars dissipate with the smoke. He probed me, asked me questions, and saw beauty in my mind. One look at me with his deep brown eyes and I fell open like a novel on the nightstand. He read me like a book.

Though most people think I am an open book, I had written something around the time I met him:

“I frequently feel the need to protect my mind—as if it is a crystal chandelier—the kind that would hang in a large foyer. Not in that it’s breakable, but in that it’s intricate, crafted, reflective, and powerful. It could cause a shatter of glass—reflective pieces flying across a room in an incandescent chaos—or light a whole room down to the glimmer of crystal in your eye. I keep the lights off as to keep it out of sight. Many people walk through the foyer of me but do not see the chandelier. I only turn the lights on when I know it’s someone who will admire the chandelier—who appreciates diamond and intricacy. It would be someone who walked into the foyer, realized they were in the dark, and began to imagine that the room would look quite phenomenal lit up. They search with a good eye, find the light switch, and turn it on. I would like to turn the lights on for more people, but few find the light switch. Few look for it. Few are even aware that they are in the dark.”

He found the light switch. He opened me, had the key to the door, the map to the road. As Alexander Hamilton said “so this is what it feels like to match wits...it’s the feeling of freedom, of seein’ the light. It’s Ben Franklin with a key and a kite.” I felt glowing, awake, alive, and free.

I’m brought back to the familiar smell of the incense as I sit in that same white chair in my room and the smoke dissipates out the window...it reminds me of something I’ve smelled before; I can’t put my finger on it. He reminds me of something before. As shocked as I was by his presence, I was more shocked by the absence of never having had met him before. Had we known each other in another life? Was I seeing a reflection of myself in him, a commonality in ourselves that I hadn’t quite encountered before? As I got to know him, it was if I was walking through a house and sometimes caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. I think if our souls were to be individually lost in the woods, they would take many of the same turns. Life is sort of like a series of random turns through the woods, and our patterns have proved quite similar. Despite our intelligence, we both spent a great deal of time pretending that we aren’t. Despite our perfectionism, we are both attracted to chaos. Despite having a passion that we live, eat, and breathe by, we pride ourselves on being “balanced,” delusionally pretending that we are not utterly consumed like the rest. We both find ourselves in bizarre situations, on top of mountains with strangers, or deep in valleys of heartache because we love so fully. Because of this, I feel as if we may run into each other in the future—turn around a bend and see the other there.

It was short, but it was sweet; a cleansing incense to the soul. He was the perfect balance of comfort and danger, a forehead kiss after a motorcycle ride. He was a brisk fall day in the MET in which I didn’t notice a single piece of art. A strong hand on the back of my neck that made me melt. The incense is burning out. Along with it, the potency of my memories which dissipate with the smoke.

Big Ben keeps turning, my shaken soul comes to a still, and the journey of random turns in the woods goes on. I look over and see Jane Austen left open on the nightstand.