“You know people will hate us for this?” our hero said. “They will be sick to their stomachs with envy because of how we are and will always be.”

Her poet thought for moment and with a subtle laugh he agreed while she floated back and forth across her kitchen.

“Misery, always, hates joy,” he said.

She smiled her crooked smile.

“Let them hate,” she said. “This, here, it is sacred.”

Just moments before he had stood on the threshold of her doorway. His hand debated between ringing her bell and knocking on her door. Two dogs were jumping inside and he was poised to ring her door bell but she opened it before he could conclude the act.

It was funny, truly, how her cool demeanor was utterly betrayed by the excitement flashing behind her eyes. These jumping and barking dogs were displaying just a small fraction of the eagerness rolling inside of her.

Oh those eyes!

They flashed with green fire and held shades of a soft, earthly, knowing hue. The colors dazzled and danced, beckoning him closer. Our poet knew many things but it was not until that moment that he knew the raw and soothing look of love.

This, here and now, was something bigger and more powerful than him and her.

His life.

Her life.

The entire universe had conspired to create this moment. Ages of actions — big and small, beautiful and ugly — had woven and layered upon each other, guided by that great invisible hand, to mold and shape two separate people with twin souls. There was no denying that they were bound for each other.

And trying to stem this love flowing out of and into each other, the dreams of an entire world would smolder into ashes until the dust was blown by the wind and nothing remained.

“One is loved,” is the line from The Alchemist. “No reason is needed for loving.”

Nothing was ever more true.

There was no plan.

Our hero and her poet had already mastered the art of “not having a plan” other than “what time are you planning to be here?”

Two cups of flour with herbs, sugar, olive oil and yeast were in a bowl. It had been slowly kneeded into a ball.

The olive oil was drizzled carefully across the dough and set aside.

It struck the poet while our hero glided through her kitchen just how beautifully simple and simply beautiful she was that morning.

A random stream of words floated through his head while she pulled an assortment of vegetables out of her refrigerator.

“Here is a feeling that I’ve only dreamed of,

You gliding barefoot on pool deck pavement.

Something soothing and everlasting.

You slide near and  my heart beats faster.”

She broke his thoughts with a motherly warning “That’s a very sharp knife so be careful, please.”

And the next set of ingredients were prepped and stirred and placed in the oven.

The grill was searing and our hero was sipping her wine while the poet watched her drift around her kitchen and into her living room.

He wondered as they sat down to eat if our hero realized he was here, today, feeding her food in a vain attempt to fill her stomach and wet her appetite in return for how she filled his heart and soul.

Maybe she knew.

And if she did not, he did not care. He planned to keep trying to tell her until he finally strung the words together in the right way. He planned to show her until he worked his fingers down the bones.

Why? Because he had waited too long for someone of her worth.