The Shape Surrounding

It was my best friend’s fifteenth birthday, her party held in the garage of her home. I stood in a dusty corner and watched the others, as was my wont, hoping I wouldn’t be noticed, observing as my solo soul required. Warmth bloomed on the side of my face and neck as I felt another gaze and glanced sideways, seeing a tall, dark haired, green eyed boy, watching me.

From across the crowded room. A tall, dark, handsome stranger. And he SAW me.

It was every love cliché imaginable, yet clichés have roots in truth. We would meet, both painfully shy, and attend two formal dances, awkwardly fumbling in the dark, two yearning innocents feeling a deeper connection than teenage words could describe. Shyness and misunderstanding would part our paths, and for twenty years I would endure a painfully mismatched marriage to a tall dark man who resembled my love in superficial looks alone. We walked our parallel paths, my one real love and I, our lives unknowingly shaped round the voids that encompassed one another, until our paths once again intersected. Free to speak, freed to love, we at last filled empty spaces our absences had created. A love begun before our births continues now, renewed, and will sustain us, no longer void, on and on to our next lives.

Tracy Plath