In the blink of an eye, something happens by chance - when you least expect it - sets you on a course that you never planned, into a future you never imagined.

An ordinary beginning, something that would have been forgotten had it been anyone but her. But as he shook her hand and met those striking emerald eyes, he knew before he'd taken his next breath that she was the one he could spend the rest of his life looking for but never find again. She seemed that good, that perfect, while a summer wind blew through the trees.

Outside the hospital, I squinted in the harsh morning sunlight. I could hear birds chirping in the tree, but even though I searched for them, they remained hidden from me.

Toward the end of their relationship she'd told him once, "I wish I could give you what you're looking for, but I don't know what it is. There's a part of you that you keep closed off from everyone, including me. Its as if I'm not the one you're really with. Your mind is on someone else." He tried to deny it, but she didn't believe him. "I'm a woman - I know these things. When you look at me sometimes, I know you're seeing someone else. Its like you keep waiting for her to pop out of thin air to take you away from all this.

I wouldn't go that far. But I know my way around the kitchen. I make dinner every night.

At night, when I am alone, I call for you, and whenever my ache seems to be the greatest, you still seem to find a way to return to me.

While I sleep, I dream of you, and when I wake, I long to hold you in my arms. If anything, our time apart has only made me more certain that I want to spend my nights by your side, and my days with your heart.