“The gift of love is that the part of you given away, if you choose, can come back to immerse you in the precious moments shared.” ~ RN

Tonight I found things that had been missing so long I had forgotten I’d lost them. Some made me smile as I passed over versions of myself from long ago. Others, I couldn’t remember why they were so important to keep, but I put them aside in case they came back to me.

Nestled between the folds of a sheet of yellow notebook paper laid a faced-down photo. Written on the back in pencil was the underlined name “Jeneva,” faded but still legible. There was no pondered gaze trying to remember the origin of the Polaroid. Like a familiar warm wave, the place and time washed over me. “Jeneva….” I softly said as I gently picked up the photo, carefully turning it over as if handling a found treasure cocooned in rice paper.

A deep breath and slow, broken exhale sturred through my clinched lips as I remembered her black hair, hazel eyes, arching back, and that smile – oh, that perfect smile. I thought, “My God, she was more beautiful than I had remembered.”

I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes, reliving our brief time together, from the first meeting of an offered chair to slow dances near the ocean’s edge where the only music was our whispered conversations and the beating of our hearts. There were nights of a thousand passionate breaths that were over too soon – and laughter, so much laughter. Long conversations spoken in a gaze – slumbers embrace where even as we slept, our bodies found a perfect way to touch – to hold each other as if it was the last time, and in a tearful goodbye, it was, as our fingertips slowly released and we walked away.

I am filled with love as I open my eyes, but my welled-up eyes and the knot in my stomach speak to loss. To relive my time with her left me misty tonight, but I’m glad to feel, to remember the gift of a love I will carry with me always.