When We Were

by Diana Elliot Graham

Some people find pen annotations in books to be sacrilegious, others treat them as gospel. To me it feels like the most intimate way to read. Like a blood oath between reader and book. The book gives of itself so selflessly with the printed words, as the reader takes them page by page. The notes I leave written in the margins are my exchange, a way I can return to the pages that have given me so much of themselves.

I think I might love this man.

The only witness to this moment, where I knew what it meant to love someone who was previously a stranger. All of the seeds he planted had bloomed in this moonlight.

It’s a slow-motion avalanche. I love you. I think. “I love you.” I say. I can’t gauge time in this moment. It crawls. So. Slowly. He doesn’t immediately open his eyes when the smile overtakes his face. He doesn’t try to hide it, not his smile, and not the emotions feeding it.

His kiss, our kiss, builds, slowly. His hands pull me deeper and deeper into him. Stealing breath from my lungs and clearing the chaos from my mind. He cleared my mind so he could fill it completely. So, there would not be noise or distraction when his hands held my face, and his eyes held mine. “I love you.” Replenishing the silence with only that singular thought.

We traded books, traded notes, traded I love yous. There was rhythm to us.