It often begins so simply. A slight smile from a stranger is habitually as natural as a fresh cotton tee straight out of the dryer. Its unpretentious softness a comfort in a closet of tweed and starchy fabric. Something as careless as cotton is potentially all it takes to feel at home. But with the simplistic ease of cotton we often forget the long-term reality; the lack of durability; the way it stretches out when worn or shrinks when washed; the way in which the colors fade and it easily tears. One must never forget that the favorite cotton tee rarely lasts forever. Of course, when it does pass the unforgiving test of time, there is nothing in the world more valuable.

Take something small. Trivial. A single solitary shard of glass left on the floor that punctures the flesh. A soft breeze that lifts your hair across your eyes to briefly block your vision. A single spotlight, a staircase, the end of a song that leads to first love, than longing and finally heartbreak.

Love may rarely come easy, in truth, one must wonder if anything that comes too naturally could ever actually be love at all. Often simplicity is no more than lazy effort. In my case it was only simple in the very beginning. But of course it was never supposed to be love at all. It was a game. A rebellion. A one night stand.

When I think about that night its startling to realize how significance had sprung from the insignificant so quickly. How at one moment he didn..t even exist in my world and than suddenly it was as if he was the only thing that had ever existed at all.

I look at pictures. An Independence Day picnic at the park. There..s a group of us smiling brightly in front of Kensington Palace, drinking bottles of wine beneath a gray summer sky. I look closely at my face, stare into my eyes. Did I know I would fall in love that night? I smiled so innocently, so sincerely unaware.


It was crowded at the sports bar. Smoke engulfed the room, shading it in deep blue tones. One could almost reach out and touch the clouds, thick with scent and dirt. Underage Americans knocked into one another, spontaneously bursting into off-tune anthems of national pride in celebration of their independence from a country they were now spending their parents hard earned money to visit.

I stood silently on my own, chain-smoking my cigarettes in a pool of self-pity. Sucking in intoxicating breath as though giving my intensity head. The pounding music was ripe as autumn strawberries and equally pungent in its digression to rot. I should have been enjoying myself. I should have seen the possibilities in the evening. But the only thing that manifested within my hazy vision was the same annoyance I felt in social gatherings back home. A fear that others in the room might see me from the same angle in which my slanted view examined myself.

Dragged onto a dance floor, I pulled in my non-existent stomach and swayed to the beats, letting the tequila shots work their way slowly into my system, warming my insides and freeing my mind from its current state of negativity. Drunk boys grabbed at me but I pulled away, determined to remain in my bubble of solemnity. Alone.

As the music hit its climactic endnote the spotlight froze. On me. In the center of the floor surrounded by nothing but the heat of the iridescent glow and a pair of eyes peering down from the staircase above. Our gazes locked briefly and a smile crept slowly to his face. Embarrassed, I looked down quietly, demurely, unsure of his stare but relieved by it nonetheless.


I held on tightly to my stuffed lion as I tried desperately to drift off to sleep. In the seat beside me a man was snoring softly, somehow magically in rhythm with the music echoing through my headphones. I opened my weak eyes and gazed out the window into the endless sea of darkness surrounding me. Far below people were tucked neatly into bed. Maybe a baby was crying, a child was praying, a couple was making love. It was just another night. Was I the only one who understood why it was so different? Could someone else feel it too?

It had been as simple as a glass marble found at a toyshop. Something strangers had touched and held before. But yet it was only meant for us. It had waited patiently amongst the others, drawing little attention to its self, lost in a cool ocean of glass. We were the only ones that understood its significance. Or at least he did. Where crowds of people had seen no more than another marble, he recognized our lives.

We were at Hamley's on Regent Street. I had wanted to find a London teddy bear for my grandmother who was quickly spreading the word around the retirement community back home that her lovely grandchild was practically on the verge of marrying Prince William just by being within the same city as the royal heir. We wandered from floor to floor; shooting laser guns, playing video games, trying out our skills ala Tom Hanks on the giant piano floor mat. Suddenly he stopped, transfixed. ..Marbles!.. he exclaimed with a childlike enthusiasm that is typically lost by the tender age of seven. He was nineteen and in many ways far more mature than the irresponsible college boys I knew back home. Yet, he still exuded an innocence that I clung to, desperate to feel what seemed to come so natural to him.

And now, he insisted on buying me a marble at a toy store.

At first even I was lost to its importance. I wanted a prettier one. I wanted one that was a bit shinier, something that sparkled. It was just a marble after all. But he sought after a meaning behind it. He looked beyond the pure glass exterior and reached for something deeper.

It took him an hour to choose the perfect marble. Clear glass with a burst of color that ran swirling like a freshly lit firecracker throughout the interior. Two crisscrossing swirls of yellow, twisting and turning in every possible direction before settling softly, quietly in the tiniest air bubble and were still. Evidence of their chaotic path lay behind, a sprinkling of dust highlighting the journey. The marble cost him no more than a single pound coin yet proved to be worth far more.

There was a pureness to our love. A simplicity. And it was ours alone. It was as if no one in history had possibly experienced love before but rather it was a feeling we created, within a world that belonged to us alone. We could wrap ourselves in its elegant softness; caress the silk that engulfed our newly discovered existence. Later I carried the painful memory of its extinction tightly in my hand, my fingers wrapped around that marble as if it was the most precious artifact in the world.

I unbuckled the safety belt and carefully reached beneath my seat, cautious not to disturb the man asleep to my right. I pulled the marble carefully from my bag. Had he predicted our lives correctly? Were we to be given another chance after all? Or were we in truth forever destined to be no more than a modern day, geographically challenged Romeo and Juliet? Just another tragic love story; not the first and certainly not the last? Tracing my finger softly across the cool surface I let my eyes follow the swirling path backwards, to the beginning again, to where we were first caught in this brutal spider web.

Currently listening to: the sound of silence
Currently watching: the sleeping puppy
Currently feeling: artistic