Delilah and Precious and all their kin

Yet what would have become of me without such a love as yours? Sometimes I still shudder when I think what might have happened if you hadn't wandered up to me as I was crossing the street. And all those times I had to smoke outside because it wasn't permitted inside, and you'd come without my calling, come right up to me and make contact.

If someone had asked, I would have said you saved my life, and that that moment—whichever was with you—was the best in my life. It had never been with anyone, only you. But if asked, how would I have answered the question of how this could be?

"I don't know" or "Who knows?" pale in comparison to "We might never understand," because I think it's answerable; it's not a rhetorical question, and there's less philosophy in the answer than pure love: I needed to be loved and needed to feel loved.

That's what you gave to me when I had nothing, when I was asked if it was me who was the abuser when it was I who'd been abused. You took all that pain away from me, and those brief moments we were together made me cry deep within because I knew what it was to care for another life, to wish to protect that life from all horrors, all negativity, even from death itself when no such power existed within me to sustain such a wish.

Only a love that refused to be denied and that refused to die, whatever the rationalization was for moving on in my thoughts. Thoughts were nothing compared to what you gave me in those brief eternities where I can still run even now when there is no one beside me.

Delilah and Precious and all their kin

It was the belief based on those moments that you and I could last forever, that we were forever, and we would wait for others to join us because all who needed love were as one and were welcome to this bliss and to what should always be.

There is no gratitude I could ever offer for this faith returned to me, a faith no human being has ever offered. But thank you: forever thank you.