Being seen

I pause. I falter. I stutter.

A man has never looked at me like that before.

I smile. I laugh. I mutter.

At seventeen, I ask..universe what was that for?

I have to remember to breathe.

He played with a strand of my hair from the back seat.

Much happens in one day, you see.

You never can imagine who you’re going to love to meet.

Future me will call this infatuation, not love, not something she would do again. But I remember clearly that I knew he would always be more than a friend. I couldn’t get enough of the way he thought I was the sun. And I burned it all to the ground when I realized I wasn’t his “one.”

But that first day and the way our eyes couldn’t leave the other remains untainted from what happened next. It stays outside of the definition of ’lover’, “the inbetween“, or ‘ my ex’. Because every girl should remember outside of heartbreak what it felt like to really feel seen. To be looked at and feel as if you’re completely who you should have always been.