To Fall in Love

This is how it feels.

It's like taking a sip of freezing water on a hot day - it numbs your tongue, your teeth, and when you swallow you feel it rush down your body, past your heart, past your lungs, through your ribs. You're revived by the first snow melt of spring contained within you.

This is how it feels.

It's when you step outside when it's just become light, and the dewdrops on the grass which used to glisten in crisp autumn mornings has hardened itself against the biting cold, and you slowly place your foot down on the frost-tipped lawn - crunch. Satisfying. The footprint you leave behind rivals those left on the surface of the moon. Perfectly frozen in time.

This is how it feels.

It's like when you're sitting outside with good friends in the comforting dusk of summer, and the sun looks half an inch tall behind the hills, and somehow every one of your responsibilities and worries is drowned out by laughter and the orchestrations of crickets. As the sky fades darker, your hearts only become lighter.

This is how it feels.

It's what happens in the aftermath of finding yourself caught in a riptide in the ocean - you're pulled forcefully underwater and no matter how hard or which way you struggle, the battle is not yours to win, so you wait and wait and your limbs twist around you and your ribs tighten against your lungs and you're convinced that you're shrinking under the pressure until there your head breaks the surface and you finally gasp for air and your ribs are serving their purpose again - protecting your strained lungs and your panicked heart.

This is how it feels to fall in love.

Or, at least, so I've been told.