Chapter 1 | Entry Two

Dear Moon,

A song came on tonight. Something with a slow, pulsing beat that made my hips sway without permission, and suddenly I was back there. In that bar. That beautiful, terrible, perfect night when I learned what it feels like to disappear into someone and somehow become more myself than I'd ever been.

Do you remember? Of course you do. You were watching.

It was so loud, Moon. The kind of loud that vibrates in your chest, where conversations become shouting and laughter becomes chaos. Warm amber light, expensive perfume and bodies pressed too close together. I should have felt small in a place like that. I usually did. I usually made myself smaller in rooms like that, dimmed my light so I wouldn't take up too much space, wouldn't be too much, wouldn't shine too bright and make others uncomfortable.

But then his hands found my waist.

And the world went silent.

I don't know how to explain it except to say that every sound, the music, the voices, the clinking glasses, all of it just...dissolved. Like someone had wrapped us in invisible lace, like we'd stepped through a doorway into another dimension where only we existed.

His arms pulled me close and I swear, Moon, I swear I felt my feet leave the ground. Not literally, though maybe literally, I don't know, I wasn't paying attention to anything as mundane as gravity. I was floating. Suspended. Held not just by his hands but by the way he was looking at me.

Oh, the way he looked at me.

His eyes, dark and warm and completely present, moved over my face like he was memorizing me. Like I was art. Like I was everything. He saw my lips, my neck, the flush creeping across my collarbone. He saw the wildness I usually kept locked away. He saw the hunger I'd been taught to hide. He saw the sparkle, the free spirit, the woman who dances and feels everything too deeply.

And instead of turning away, instead of asking me to be less, he leaned closer.

When his lips brushed against mine they were soft at first, then deeper, more passionate, my entire body came alive. Every nerve ending lit up like stars. Tingling started at my mouth and radiated outward with every breath, down my neck, across my breasts, pooling low in my belly, spreading down my thighs. I felt it in my fingertips. I felt it in my toes. I felt it in places I'd forgotten could feel anything at all.

My heart cracked open. Not broke opened. Like a door I'd kept locked for so long finally swinging wide, letting light flood into rooms I'd abandoned.

The bar was still there, the noise, the people, the chaos, but we were untouchable. We were in our own world. His hands on my lower back, my fingers in his hair, our bodies touching together, it had nothing to do with the music playing and everything to do with something ancient, and true, and ours.

I had never felt so seen.

I had never felt so safe.

I had never felt so completely, unapologetically, wildly myself.

In his arms, in that loud, crowded bar, I wasn't too much. I was exactly enough. I was exactly right. Everything I did, everything I was, only drew him closer.

That's what I'd been searching for my whole life, Moon. That's what I didn't even know was possible. To be fully myself and fully loved at the same time. Not in spite of my intensity, but because of it. Not despite my depth, but drawn to it like he'd been thirsty his whole life and I was water.

I came back to myself, standing in my kitchen with that song playing, and I had to grip the counter to steady myself.

Because he's fading now. That man who held me like I was the only woman in the world is choosing to walk away. And I'm here, still awake, still alive, still carrying the memory of what it felt like to float.

It hurts.

But I'm also grateful. Because now I know. I know what I'm worth. I know what kind of love I deserve. I know I'm not too much. I've just been giving myself to people who were too little.

He showed me I could be free. And even though he's leaving, even though I'm learning to hold this awakening alone, I'm not going back. I'm not shrinking. I'm not dimming my light to make his absence easier to bear.

I felt my feet leave the ground once. I know what it's like to float.

And I'm going to find that again. With someone who doesn't walk away. With someone who stays.

Or maybe, just maybe, I'll find it within myself.

Maybe I'll learn to hold myself the way he held me. To look at myself the way he looked at me. To see my own sparkle, my own wildness, my own hungry, beautiful self, and let that be enough.

Thank you for that night, Moon. Thank you for witnessing it. Thank you for holding the memory when it feels too big for me to carry alone.

I'm still here. Still floating, even without his arms.

—Still dreaming