I love you, though you hurt me so.

I didn't fall in love. I was taken-pulled under.

Henry Winter wasn't a man so much as a gravity-the kind that unravels you quietly, until you begin calling it-and all things-by new names. He came like a truth I'd been running from, wrapped in a radiant calm that made me want to tear my stillness apart.

He taught me that wisdom is rarely found in the light of day, but instead, in the most peculiar of places - most often in those long stretches of dark nights that make you wonder if you'll ever see, again, the light of day; that to Become, first, you must endure the burning stench of decay.

There were moments when I saw him, and he saw me-moments full of such raw honesty, the likes of which life had yet to, and has yet since, offered me. In that way, darkness was not punishment but an invitation to integration-one I cannot help but be eternally grateful for.

I suppose it is as Rilke said: "Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Every Angel is terror." I, stupidly, did not think of how much such a truth-for the most beautiful of them all-would weigh.