To Have and to Hold

Spence was my first love, my only free fall, my terrible heartache. We met in college as typical freshmen.  Me: shy, quiet, nervous.  Him: outgoing, intimidating, and wild, all the things I wasn’t.  Yet we collided, smoke turning to stardust changed to flesh.  Such catastrophic connection couldn’t last. Maybe our purpose of collision was to show each other what our other selves could’ve been, in a different universe. We split apart—not separated, because that word is so gentle and we cracked in half—and I haven’t seen him in two and a half years.  We aren’t the same; we never were. I hoped, but hope is nothing but a hellbent dream. I made it two years without him, I could make it forever more. Was determined to, because I wanted my life to mean something.  I became, in one word, happy. And then I was kidnapped.  Spence...save me...