You told me at the beginning there were things about your life that you thought sure to scare me off.

You told me then in what you thought was a warning, a caution for me not to get involved, or to explain your faults. You didn’t realise they were what made you perfect.

You told me about the worst things that had happened to you: walking in on your fiancee sleeping with another man, watching a friend die after being hit by a car while riding a motorbike, finding a friend after their suicide attempt. The doctors told you that you had prolonged his life but ultimately he couldn’t be saved.

And you believed this about yourself as well: unable to be saved.

No, I never wanted to save you, and I know I couldn’t ask you to save me either, but you told me these things to share yourself with me and to make me leave.

And all I heard was your strength. All I hear is that on those inevitable nights when I cry myself to sleep that you won’t be shaken. All I heard is that I knew I would fall in love with you.

“Okay,” I said, following your speech of everything I should know is wrong with you.

I remembered being 17 and telling a similar speech at midnight, on the phone, to Number 1.

Don’t get involved, I said.

And here are all the reasons why. Don’t blame me when I ruin your life.

Number 1 knew then what I know now, that those flaws we see in ourselves are the cracks that the ones who love us can see the shining light through, the golden light that streams out of us and they long to bask in it, just a little bit longer. I know Number 1 saw that in me, Number 3, and I see that in you. I’m a lizard for you and all I ever want to do is sit on a stone beneath your light and warmth, basking for the endless hours of my life. 

I read somewhere that the way to love someone is to gently run your hands over them until you find their cracks, and then to slowly pour your love into them.

Well, you showed me the biggest ones you knew of, and I promise to fill them until you are paved with all the gold of my love, until you know with every atom that my love surrounds you, until with every step, instead of being heavy with the pain that you believe is what defines you, it is buoyant with molten, golden love, dripping from you and touching all who you meet as well.