In the soft trembling of a Tuesday afternoon, he appeared...a constellation of impossible precision. One hundred and ninety-one centimeters of unexpected grace, standing against the filtered light of the university café.

My body knew before my mind could translate. Neural pathways fired like scattered stars, a primitive knowing that predates language. Pheromones...those invisible messengers...carried something ancient, something unspoken.

His hands first. Sculpted as if Michelangelo had dreamed them into existence, fingers holding the potential of entire conversations never yet spoken. Marble-pale, elegant as David's hands, they moved with a musician's delicate intention while arranging a coffee cup.

Then that smile. Beatific. A luminescence that fractured ordinary time, soft as forgotten moonlight, sharp as the first tremor of recognition.

Rational thought dissolved. The basal ganglia of my brain sang its wild, intuitive song...a frequency beyond intellectual mapping. I understood then how Helen of Troy's face could launch a thousand ships. This was that kind of seeing: a seeing that becomes a form of touching. 

My entire being became a landscape of pure perception. A pain so sharp as to cease breathing...

In matters of the heart, the mind does not calculate. It surrenders.

In memory of B.