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There was one other day I remember when I fully and truly believed in god. I was fifteen, I think: it was the year after I’d spent a week thinking I was born again, until the church started sending my family letters telling them they were going to burn in hell unless they followed my sheepful footsteps. And I turned away from that god, because I knew my family was good and because I don’t like threats. But a year later, one day, I woke up in peace. The sun was clear and warm, and I called a friend. We spent the day walking along the beach, playing in the tide pools, running in and out with the waves, then strolled up to a playground and swung on the swings, slid down the slides, hung from monkey bars. We made cookies that turned out miserable. Nothing remarkable happened – no thunder, no revelation, no big booming voice from above calling down to tell me I am here – just a day, one full day in which I fully loved the world.

I didn’t realize it until the day after that, when I woke up normally, tired and irritated, and thought back to the day before. And realized that for those hours, I hadn’t questioned, hadn’t pushed or pulled at life, just let it be, and for those hours I believed – reflexively, unconditionally. It faded, and I’ve never quite found it since.

There were moments almost like that that I remember with you, moments when the love was so absolute that there was no room in my head, in my heart, for questioning. I can think of three:

One, we are lying in bed one morning, a day like any other, and I wake earlier than you. I don’t want to disturb your sleep, so I reach carefully over to the book I’ve been reading, and open it. I lay there, reading, for a while, our legs and bodies still intertwined, and you start to snore. Somehow, and I don’t know why, that crystallizes it for me: I love you. I can imagine mornings like this stretching out over the rest of our lives, and I discover that I quite like that thought.

Two, we are leaving the theatre, and you are walking ahead of me up the aisle. You reach your hand back for mine, casually, blindly, without turning, and I step forward to take it. You lead me up through the dark theatre steps and back into the world. We walk home without letting go, and I don’t think I stopped smiling until I fell asleep.

Three, you are brushing your teeth before bed, and I look up from my book on the bed to watch you. I’ve told you this before: I imagine you as an old man in the bathroom, doing your old man bathroom things. The thought makes me smile, makes me want to see you there, then, with a lifetime of evenings between, together.

But the fear took me, sneaking up from behind just when I thought I had settled into contentment, showed mere there was merely joy, and a bottomless pit below. And all my love for you was not enough: I’m sorry. Steeped in my misery, until all the sweetness of your love couldn’t make it palatable, until nothing would do but to find myself some clear water, some new horizon to throw my shadow against.

I made promises: I intend to keep them.

But the time hasn’t come yet; I am still too wrapped up in my memories, in myself. I think I am too distracted by old pain to see the grace that has plopped itself down around me, prosaic and stunning. Every so often I look up to find the sunset blinding me, the shadow of a tree on the wall of a building, sycamore fruits in the wind like so many tiny morning-stars, a medieval arsenal in green miniature.

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