In The Event This Doesn't Fall Apart

by Shannon Lee Barry

You say everything I’ve ever wanted to hear.

You have this way of looking at me that stops my heart; it is the way, I think, I’ve always dreamed of being looked at. Like I hurt your eyes a little. Like you can’t believe your luck to be standing in front of me.

Maybe history repeats. But if it does it’s getting better.

It is easy to go through something hard with you. I think that could be the beginnings of something like love.

Sometimes it feels like fate is telling me where to go. Like the universe flashes for just a moment— Pay attention. This one’s important. Don’t lose this.

and I thought, yes to this and anything he asks me

You feel like a book I read a long time ago— learning you is like remembering something I’d seen written. Your thoughts spill onto me like a dog eared page or an underlined paragraph. Familiar but slightly surprising all the time. You open your arms to me and I think, I have been here before. This is safe.

things like this don’t come around too easily, I know. It’s rare. It’s big. I’m trying to pay attention.

But knowing and hearing it were entirely different. And I was made different, made better, by you.

But when I met you I realized there was no settling.

And that is what it’s like to be loved by you. I am exceptional, even when I’m awful. I am happy even when I’m sad.

When it came to loving you, it was fact. There was never a decision at all.

I thought the reckoning was shifting everyone’s lives and bringing a change so great it was rewriting the fabric of the universe. Turns out I was just falling in love.