Chapter 1 - Second life

When you fall in love, you will know it.
You will know the person. You will remember him.

It usually happens when your eyes first meet, that sound of thunder between a cat yawning. You will stay for a second, and he look at you, while you will be using the last breath you take from your past life.

It is a death.
It is a rebirth.

Until you take your first new breath into the world where he breathes too, you will be waiting.

That wait in his eyes will feel like years, like lifetimes, like past and present folding together.

You will write a thousand poems in every second that cannot be said out loud, looking at the curves, smelling the air, meeting the lips, trying to see where the soul is and where it has been.

When the time comes that one of you steps into a new life, the wait will linger.
You will give your hand as an introduction, excited to feel his touch for the first time.

It feels like touching yourself — same skin — or maybe you have touched him before, and somehow your body will remember before your brain does.

When the hands meet, fingers will fight for space; the snakebite will release its poison into your blood.

Your skin will burn under the soft wind.
Your whole body will be paralyzed immediately with the poison boiling your soul.

You cannot open your mouth — because if you do, a thousand poems will escape, poems held inside for twenty-seven years.

Someone will say “hi,” with a cold skin caused by an ice that froze the oceans and dangerous waves that demon of storms caused it in your conscious.

Nothing will move. No body will move. No life under the ocean.
The universe will watch. The air will hold its breath. No movement.

You remember him.
You remember the taste of the divine between those lips without kissing.
You remember the pain gathered under his eyes, the soft hair, the hand you held to greet, with no word spoken.

Finally, words will meet courage and a“Hi.” will roll inside your mouth.

A smile. Awkward looks. Disbelief in what has happened.

In that moment, the urge of wanting to hug him and cry — cry so hard in anger with be your biggest war of your life between yourself and alter ego, to asking where he was when all the bad things happened, why he came now?

A urge to cry in his chest, like to a brother, a father, a lover.

He will say, “You were in a dark street. I could smell your skin, the scent of sun and sea. Vanilla kept itself hidden until the hug. I recognized you.”

Because you will remember when you see them.

In that moment, there will be no more you or him.
There will be one soul only, one person in two skin shells.

This will be the pain of letting yourself go, and the joy of being finally complete.