Don't wake me I'm not dreaming.

I could hear myself saying the words to the story and felt helpless as my tongue moved faster than my brain. Why was I sharing this? Why now? His eyes were filled with sadness as I laughed away the discomfort of the details. He asked only one question, which opened up the hurt and pain of that particular incident. The look on his face was intriguing to me: concern, sorrow, awe. His hand gripped my leg tighter as I told him about the recovery. And he somehow seemed to inhale and exhale simultaneously as I finished. He said nothing, and the vulnerability of my confession hung in the air, as I exclaimed sheepishly that he now knew my secret; it was something I rarely told anybody. He pulled me closer to him, with both arms. And as the silence became thicker, I fearfully asked him what he was thinking, my voice barely audible.This, he huskily whispered back. And a perfect, passionate, beautiful kiss filled the holes I always opened when I talked about that day, that time, that moment in my history. It conveyed so much without uttering a word. 

I thought about that kiss the entire drive home. The look in his eyes right before our lips touched. The protective warmth of his arms pulling me in. The reassuring breath we both shared when it was finished. If that kiss had been cinematic, the camera would have panned around us and twirled as beautiful instrumental music came to its climax and then softly fell into melodic notes as our lips parted into a soft smile. 

To him it may have just been an ordinary kiss with any ordinary girl. But this kiss was my balm of gilead.  It made me feel helpless and whole at the same time. There are moments of rare beauty in my life, unparalleled by anything else. He may fade away or his life path may diverge from mine. But I will always have this kiss, this memory to pour itself into the holes and fill the void that inevitably emerges when I talk about this chapter of my broken past. I can't tell him how much this kiss and moved me. Partially because I sound a little crazy. But I had to write this moment down, preserve it. I needed to capture the details on paper before I go to sleep and convince myself that, upon waking, this kiss was just a dream.