(Steps 1-4, as seen in The Darkest Target)

How to fall in love, in four easy steps (poems). Meant to be read in order.

. . .

S T E P   O N E  :  S t o r m

It was irrational.

It was useless. It was hopeless. It was futile.

In fact, it was downright dangerous.

To play with her own emotions like that... letting them drift into uncharted territory... it was reminiscent of the menacing storm through which they ran, to reach the front door of the large home on Totteridge Road in old Camden town.

A fortress, as she'd come to expect the worst, and was never able to predict the weather—especially not in this new city. It was so many thousands of miles away from anything recognizable to her.

Maybe, though, the rain was trying to tell her something.

Maybe its pitter-pattering on the strong windows was morse code.

Maybe the reverberating thunder beneath her toes was more like his rumbling laughter—and when she was around, he always seemed to laugh at nothing at all.

Maybe there was more to himself than he'd let on, and something in his lightning eyes kept her searching for more.

Searching, always searching, despite the dangers.

Because if he was a storm, she was a storm chaser.

. . .

S T E P   T W O  :  D i f f e r e n c e

At first, she noticed the differences in him...

The quirks.

The novelties.

And there were many. So many, that she could've filled every hour of every day just studying the peculiarities of him.

Different from her, he was. Very different.

And, so powerfully, that contrast pulled her in.

He was mysterious—but not in a trite, contrived way that an overly-enthusiastic writer might use to describe her sickeningly perfect male character. She was no writer of fiction, and even when he made her feel like a princess, the truth was that, this was no fairy tale.

She knew he wasn't perfect—not to the outside world, at least.

He fought to control his temper. He cursed like a sailor from those beautiful lips. He kept too many thoughts to himself. He paced the floor too often, leaving scuffs on the tiles. He mumbled when battling with his own nerves, then laughed it all off... like that was completely intentional.

Imperfections.

But his imperfections... they were part of what captivated her in the first place. They were material for studying. For learning. And when it came to him, she loved to learn anything at all.

She smiled when helping to mop away the black marks on the marble...

Watched the angry swells of his chest, like rising and falling tides of a briny ocean...

She even began to love the way he murmured various four-lettered words.

How could he make syllables—that were meant to be dirty—sound so... lush?

Passionate.

Despite his flaws, he was passionate. And flaws had a funny way of enchanting her. So, when she cared about someone this deeply, every flaw became picture-perfect to her. That, and mysterious.

He was mysterious—like the textures of an old acrylic painting... wondering what it might feel like to run her fingers over the grooves, but being too afraid to touch the pristine creation.

He was mysterious—like the clearest nighttime sky, and trying to fathom her own seemingly insignificant size against the vastness of the solar system.

He was mysterious, just like the galaxy itself.

Every detail of him seemed lost in that vastness, with several lifetimes spent studying him not coming nearly close enough, in order to learn it all. More telescopes were needed. More telescopes and more lifetimes.

But he wasn't simply mysterious. Mysteries could be solved, but he couldn't. She was sure of that.

No, no, no.

He was also strikingly intelligent—with the depth of his spoken thoughts effortlessly stirring her own thoughts to life. The smartest person she'd ever met, in fact, was he.

He was truly witty—with humor that could make any bronze statue crack its first smile in a century.

He was kind—wearing his heart on his sleeve, as if he could turn selflessness into a fashion statement.

He was beautiful—to the point of being painful, like staring into the sun for too long on a blistering August afternoon.

He was just out of reach—new, and not belonging to her at all, although something about his heart had her feeling that she knew him somehow.

Like a story she hadn't read for years, but as she skimmed the details—knocking off the particles of dust—things became more and more clear. Coming back.

Coming back, and back, and back. Mosaic memories falling into place.

Lest we forget, however, they were opposites.

Opposite beings, like fire and water.
Like rough corners and smooth edges.
Like magnets... north and south poles.

Or perhaps like chiseled pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—appearing to be so unalike at first, but falling together rather fluently. Naturally complementing the other. Strengthening the other.

Fitting. Perfect.

And when her heart pounded at this epiphany, his beat along in time. Bass and snare.

Because... they were different... but in even more ways, they were so very much the same. Like two sides of the same coin.

So similar, so familiar, and although she'd always been afraid to fall, fate stole two things from her: sense and defense.

And beyond those two things, he stole one: fear.

Her fear of heights was replaced by a warmth in her veins. And something about the way his russet eyes glistened... made her believe he'd never let her skin her knees...

. . .

S T E P   T H R E E  :  F l o a t i n g  /  F a l l i n g

And so she fell.

She fell like grains of sand, in an upturned hourglass... hours, she never had enough of those with him.

She fell like rain droplets from the Camden skies... soaking into her unnaturally light hair, like she wished his words would soak completely into her pores, not just into her ears.

She fell like lucky pennies into a glass jar... her pounding heart like coins, audibly clashing and thudding. And somehow, just like her heart, he never allowed the glass to break.

She fell like water swirling down a silver drain...

Like her favorite album onto a turntable...

Like a child's knee on the playground.

She fell like shooting stars, upon which she only wished for him.

She fell like he was gravity itself—the force of attraction between two masses in his spinning, endless universe.

He was gravity. He was air.
He was air. He was gravity.

But he was also her anti-gravity, because falling in love with him was like slowly sailing through outer-space. His lips left her feeling suspended in a beautiful static. His voice broke through the white noise of her life... spinning her around. Dancing.

His skin on hers, frictionless. Weightless and buoyant and dizzy... sensations for reveling.

He had her seeing stars, since staring at him in the dark was like peeking through an ethereal kaleidoscope... through which, she felt, she wasn't meant to see. Nevermind that, she thought, as the constellations in his irises made a feeling of pure heat pump through her veins, muscles and tendons.

Yes, she fell for him. As if she could've ever done anything but.

Tails, heads... luck, fate.

She'd seen it coming from miles away, but that never lessened the impact of its acceptance. He held her in his galaxy, refusing to let go. His celestial arms wrapped her up, while barreling into her soul at the speed of light.

She gasped, as the air from his mouth had breathed her back to life.

She breathed him in like oxygen, and of course, she fell for him.

Though, in his world—in his solar system—there was no gravity with which to tumble and harm herself. Still, she fell... she fell for him hard...

But really, she floated, too.

. . .

S T E P   F O U R  :  S e c r e t s

Secrets, she finally learned, swam through his body like blood.

Rushing, coursing.

Circulating.

Flooding, flowing.

Some secrets were white—pure, faultless and excited, like pine needles sprinkled with sugary snow, in the heart of winter. These secrets, he could not wait to share with her. On the tip of his tongue, they stayed... until the perfect moment arrived, when he could finally let them spill.

Spill like hope from his fingers, drawing major chords from his preferred musical instruments.

Spill like life-sustaining liquid from the bottomless glass of their shared laughter.

Spill like relief from his eyes, the first time their lips met... well, the first time since...

Some secrets were black—hidden behind the shadows of his aching ribs, like his bones were carved from wood. Within him, alder pieces broke off into his muscles.

Splinters, spreading into his muscles. Guilt, playing on his heart like mallets on marimbas.

Even before he figured it out for himself, she knew he was playing a game. Chess, as she learned, with black and white pieces.

And there were two players, but she was not one of them.

The duality of him delegated him to two seats—opponent one, and opponent two. In circles, he paced... switching chairs.

Hanging pawns, and pins, and positional play.

But she knew one thing that he had yet to learn: in life, just as in chess, he could not win a game against himself.

She wished only to flip the board on its side... to watch the black and white pieces tumble to the floor. Badly, she wanted to... but she couldn't.
He was the only one who could end the game. She knew this.

So she watched. Waiting. Wishing he could read her mind, to learn the truth.

Without knowing how to verbalize it, she was sure that they, together, were too vibrantly colored to ever live life in black and white. And their opposing traits did not make them opponents.

No. Not even close.

Perhaps she lacked the innate talent to fully utilize paint brushes and palettes. Nevertheless, she appreciated the ability that every skilled painter possessed—of blending primary colors, thereby creating a world of new hues for onlooking eyes.

She and he? They were colorful. In fact, the world had never seen colors quite like the two of them—alone or combined.

But, to compare them relatively, she was blue—cool water from a brook, softly streaming.

And he... he was red—blazing fire and burning passion, turning even his eyes into a russet shade.

Those eyes were a reflection of his heated spirit: warmth for her, or hellfire and brimstone for anyone that dared to harm her.

Heaven must have anticipated the joining of them... red and blue. Its amethyst skies waited, on bated breath, for their electricity-laced reunion. This reunion was delayed only by his desire to pay for his own imagined sins.

If he stepped out of the game—out of the black and white world—he would've seen she already forgave him. She loved him and she forgave him. Now it was time for him to forgive himself, and integrate their shades... just as he did the ceaseless, beautifully-flowing musical notes, for her ears.

Red and blue—they were really one and the same thing, she figured out, since they both sustained the other... like nutrient-rich blood.

He was her blood, and she was his. In all truthfulness, biology had never been of the utmost interest to her, but she had retained just a bit of basic knowledge on the human condition:

Blood was red—outside of the body.
Blood was blue—inside of it.

And just as the blue blood that flowed through her fragile human body, she would stay blue—missing the entirety of him, heart and soul, like oxygen. And until he was ready to spill his secrets—every single last one—her pounding, red heart would wait.

Wait patiently, until it was time.

And maybe... it was.