At a poetry reading…

We first met two weeks before lockdown, at a poetry reading, both writers and all that comes with it.
He asked for my number. I didn't think much of him at first, except that he somehow seemed and felt familiar.
We went out with mutual friends two days later and there, as if lit by a spark, a deep connection was formed or at least, at first, mutual desire. We kissed two days before lockdown but didn't let it go further.
We spent the next almost three months writing each other, contemplating existence and this apocalyptic event, our isolation, our hunger for life, our yearning for those 'romantic almosts' and our love for the word 'yearning'. We bonded over philosophies on life and art and writing, over Nick Cave's tragic love songs and brilliant European black and white films.
We finally met when it all opened up again, hoping we could pick up where we left off. But we didn't account for the mess within us both and the mess outside, and how it would all make us unstable components in a mixture that could possibly cause nuclear disaster. To save each other and any chance we might have in the future, I ended it to give us both some time. I didn't expect that two days later I'd get my heart broken anyway in an unexpected encounter...

It took me a year to get passed the heartache and exactly one year later (on the exact same day) I met someone new, a wonderful man. It all seemed to be going well, until I got Covid for the second time and possibly infected him and are currently enduring my 5th quarantine.

To be continued...