the baby.

On saturday I came face to face with a ghost from my past. He looked at me through low lids & glazed eyes, through thick, dark eyelashes which I always both loved & envied. For the first time in years this ghost stood in front of me, finally tangible. He embraced me with outstretched arms & the rest of the world disappeared in a fog of crying girlfriends, bikes, strangers & subway noises. I was intoxicated in his arms, sinking deep into a sea of forgotten feelings, letting myself drown in them.

I don't remember the words spoken, only arms, hands, lips, eyelashes. The memory has a dreamlike quality which was created with equal parts scotch, whiskey, surprise, & nostalgia - but the main ingredient is something entirely different. It is something indescribable that I will futilely attempt to describe as magic, mysterious, illogical. You don't believe in it unless you see it for yourself, unless you experience it & realize there is no other way to explain it, it just is what it is, magic. Its magic that makes you forget the way you used to be frustrated & jealous, the way you used to cry & ache, & how long it took you to accept that he was never yours to keep. Magic or chemistry. Magic or pheromones. It hangs like a cloud & floats invisibly in the air waiting for two unsuspecting people to walk into it & hug each other on the subway platform at the 14th street station. Some mystical force that causes former-lovers & now-strangers to hold each other & kiss with liquor-coated tongues all the way from Union Square to somewhere-Uptown, where the spell is broken once the ghost reaches his stop & says goodnight. No longer in a dream, faces of friends materialize with puzzled expressions.

"What was that?"

How can you explain something you don't truly understand? Like how one person can claim a space in your heart without ever paying your emotional rental fees. How can you explain feelings for no reason, feelings that don't fade with time? Feelings that have no expectations, those that are boundless. Love that asks for nothing & gives nothing in return. Love disguised as a ghost that tries too hard to sound indifferent when he calls & asks if you remember kissing him, even though you know he would be offended if you said you didn't.