I remember when you and your friends first met us

At Half Moon Bay

You stood out the most in my opinion

The water hit just below your torso

The small ying yang tattoo on your chest had little dragons imprinted into your skin

The thin beard you were clearly growing out suited you 

Your neatly sculpted hair that seemed to never move a muscle begged for my hands to test that theory

 

What really caught my eyes, even past my tented aviators, was the familiarity about you

I've seen you before

Walking past with just a glimpse but enough to remember

Just another attraction I knew I couldn't have

However, that never seems to stop me

 

I never paid much attention to your friends

I frankly only wanted yours

When you subtly mentioned your girlfriend from back home, I'll admit,

it was disappointing

But that didn't mean I couldn't imagine

 

Being surrounded by the clearest ocean

A slight breeze so lifting along with the fresh sea and foreign land

I began to fall in love with you

I didn't think much about it because this has happened before

 

Being alone for so long, I begin to fall in love with everyone

A stranger walking past me down the street,

I might fall in love with the way they walk

Or the way one drives past me playing a nice song

I sometimes even fall in love if one is sitting at a table, eating their lunch with so much concentration

it's unnoticed by everyone

Except for me

 

I fall in love with strangers I don't even know

I imagine a life with each of them

The different paths I would take for them

With some, I was a housewife

taking care of our four children, cooking, cleaning, 

waiting for my stranger to come home to me

Others, I was on the road

breathing in different airs

seeing the Grand Canyon, hearing my memorable melody of wind

wishing I could just float on all of Earth's horizons

 

But with you, my old stranger

I can see both

A life that satisfies my thirst for running

as well as a life of eternal love

Why is that?

 

I thought I could control those thoughts

Embedding them deep in my mind

I thought I could control it when you kissed me on the boat

I thought I could control it when you broke up with your girl from back home

I could barely control it on our first date

But now, it's unbearable 

Knowing you is making me fall

 

As if I've finally hatched in my nest, the last to waken 

Set foot on the edge looking out towards the world ahead of me

Greenery surrounding me

The beauty of the forest engulfing every part of me

I set out to fly

But only to perish on the ground below

Withering into the soil I now call my home waiting for my death

 

I thought this would never last for so long

Maybe it's real

So here I am falling for you, old stranger

and like my complex soul, it is never a simple love

because you feel nothing for me

You are still unhatched, waiting for the day you fly away from me

leaving me to the soil in the forest

How was I to know you could do this to me?

How was I to know that the first kiss we shared would sit deeper in my heart?

How was I to know the ocean and air that surrounded us was a warning?

How was I to know this would all begin,

at Half Moon Bay