You hear about it all the time. The moment when two souls collide. How they describe it as the world spinning out of control on its axis their whole life until suddenly their entire universe righted itself right before their eyes. They talk about a magnetic pull, an orbit, to this person who, by sheer force of being who they are, draws the person right into their gravitational pull. They talk about sparks and butterflies. And the more logical? Even they acknowledge chemistry, a physical attraction that is unable to be denied.
Before I met you, I believed in sparks. I thought I had felt it before. I knew, or atleast I thought I knew, what it was like to fall into another person completely. But that first day, I discovered something about sparks. You see, I had believed that a spark could ignite and burn only as a forest fire, wild and unpredictably out of anyone's control. I had felt the raging flames before. I had been engulfed in them. What once warmed me had burned instead until I was left standing alone coughing at the smoke it left behind. I thought sparks were matches lit and left untended to and the only result was to burn the whole houses to the ground. Flames licking at my heals as I tried to run. That was what sparks meant to me, eventual destruction. I became afraid of fire, or anything that burned too brightly.
But with you, I felt the match light. It lit immediately and illuminated the whole room with its small flame. I watched your face as it glowed only for me. The spark we ignited was not a forest fire at all. As soon as I saw it I knew that you wouldn’t burn my home to the ground. No. The flame brought shed light in even the dimmest places. It lit up the rooms in my soul I long ago condemned to permanent darkness. You my dear, are the fire in my hearth. You are the thing that creates light and keeps me warm. And I know now that fire is still fire, but what matters is how it’s tended too. I promise to keep ours burning bright and never to neglect it lest we lose this house we are building. Thank you for being the light in all the dark places. Thank you for that first, perfect flicker.
