I'm So in Love With You Today

Not every day, but today.

Today I am picturing your smile and the sound of your voice and trying to remember the way the neck of your jacket smelled when I hugged you last outside the rainy pub dotted with tiny pumpkins and fake cobwebs strung like cotton candy,

and today I am in love with you.

Today I wonder where you are in the world, crave to peer into even some mundanity of your existence just to see it as you’re experiencing it, for a moment. 

The song I’m listening to makes me think of you. Not because we've ever listened to it together, but because it stirs me reminiscing memories we've never shared, colouring you into could’ve-been moments that exist beyond these ragged sea cliffs without the abrasion of practicality or pain.

I can’t say I knew you in another life because all I know is this one, where our fate can be counted down to a tidy few days, hours wrapped into a succinct ending. But I felt it there, a story beyond, locked in déjà vu with a stranger from half a planet away. And all I could do was riffle the pages, desperately grasping at the words whirring past to try and piece together the rest.

Most days I ache to explore each of my possible lives, to sink a handful of pins onto the map and meet all of the people and places hidden beneath them. But today, I dream of just one.

I imagine the people passing by you at this very moment, hurrying with car keys or slinging an overstuffed bag of groceries onto their shoulder without any recognition of you — without any idea that to someone a lifetime away, you are fiction breathed to life.

We encounter thousands of people over a lifetime, yet how many can we name?

Today, it is you. The one I dream of, the one whose mystery I miss most.

You are my soul mate today, and you don't even know it.