Remembering the King

Your eyes found me in a moment.

Bright blue, alive, and paired with a smile that caught my breath before I even understood what was happening. I came to a stop as he wheeled his bike toward me, the golden sunflower shining from it like a sign I was meant to notice. He said hello with that smitten softness, and when he hugged me, it felt so right that I lost touch for a moment. Everything else disappeared.

I had to go, and he watched me leave.

But my heart kept pulling at me, and so I returned.

Later, with his green hat and quick feet, I watched him dance with that smile stretched across his face, free and alive in the dust. I sat there for a moment, waiting, gathering the courage to open my own door and walk toward the handsome stranger who had already begun pulling me in. When I reached you, I smiled and said, “I came back.”

His face lit up.

He embraced me with that same ecstatic warmth, and once again I felt it, that feeling I can only call home. The feeling of you.

We kicked up dust for the sake of the burn. We laughed, we talked, we danced, we inverted, we learned. There was a playfulness between us, something easy and unforced, as though our bodies and spirits had already met somewhere before this life and were simply remembering the steps.

Then it was time for me to go.

Called to fly, I said goodbye, and we embraced once again. Lost in his space, I somehow found my ground in your arms. He looked into my eyes, and in that suspended little world between us, I asked if I could kiss him.

He told me he was thinking the same thing.

We kissed, and I felt myself pour into the moment... into you, into us, into the possibility that something sacred had just opened.

And yet, even in moments like these, I remind myself: remember the King.

Do not get lost in the sauce.

Every reflection holds a piece of truth from the heart. Every person who arrives carries a fragment of the story, a lesson, a memory, or a mirror. Each one holds some portion of time spent, some perfect moment that dances around my mind and makes my heart skip a beat. I find freedom in that delight, but I also know the pull of lust, the temptation that so often lives close beside wonder.

Every moment creates a vision.

Every connection leaves behind nuances, traces, echoes that continue playing on the drum of my heart.

And still, there is a King awaiting me.

Not as fantasy. Not as some illusion to obsess over. But as a truth I have already felt. He is doing the work to reach my path. He told me. Somewhere inside, I know that. So when I thought I saw you again on the art bus, bopping your head and smiling from ear to ear, the world stopped for a second. Being reminded of you made my whole body remember.

It made my heart remember the old story.

The one where I fell in love dancing in the forest, fireflies shining in your eyes.

I have been loved so fully here at the Burn. Seen through and through. Allowed to pursue without rejection. I have been pursued too, and I’ve found joy in every reflection brave enough to play their own heart song in my presence. There is beauty in that. There is healing in that.

I love love.

And I am out here searching for you in a crowd.

I found you... but you were not the full “you” that I had felt in my heart.

You were a glimpse.

A reminder.

A living echo.

Not the final arrival, but a reflection of what is possible.

And maybe that is the lesson: not every beautiful encounter is meant to become forever. Some are meant to awaken memory. Some are meant to stir hope. Some are meant to remind us that our heart still works, that our body still knows how to light up, that wonder is still available to us.

You were not a mistake.

You were not nothing.

You were a perfect moment.

A kiss in the dust.

A golden sunflower.

A blue-eyed reminder that I am still capable of feeling deeply and receiving joy without fear.

So I bless the memory.

I bless the dance.

I bless the version of myself that returned, that smiled, that dared to say, “I came back.”

And I keep going.

Because somewhere ahead, the King still waits.

And when he arrives, I will know him... not because I am lost in yearning, but because every reflection before him helped teach my heart how to recognize home.

The Beautiful Story Never Told, Jo He and My Taeo

"I am on my way to your path."