What do you see when you look at me?

What do you see when you look at me?

Here we are, two strangers brought together by the threads of fate. Before this moment I had never even spoken to you. We used to be distant planets orbiting the same star. Now we hold each other in a way that’s both frighteningly foreign and deeply familiar. And in this apostolic embrace we sit, two members of a small expedition, searching for security and acceptance in a turbulent ocean.

Are you the center of this new solar system? Was it your gravity that brought these other planets along with me, joining together so none of us is alone in the universe? Or are you another one of us; small cogs in a vast machine trying to discover how we all fit in?

Will this intimacy always feel so rare? How is it that something so basic as a gentle touch has been stolen from us for so long? Why must we spend every day adrift when coming home is as simple as this?

Here we are, sharing our stories and dreams, giving shape and identity to this fledgling group of voyagers.

You sit in the center, and as you speak, your eyes move between us. When you look at me, our closeness baffles me and I try to drink in every moment before your gaze passes again.

And when you look away my mind returns to your arm on me, a constant reminder that this moment is real. Like a man lost in the desert, it is the cool touch of water that distinguishes between truth and mirage.

Here we are.

When I look at you I see that the world is large enough for more than myself. When I look at you I see a bridge to stories I’ve never dreamed. When I look at you I see that it is the intersection of our lives that weaves meaning into the universe.

What do you see?