text: When I was 18 there was a lightning storm. It lasted for hours, the sky flashing and light dancing around me. I could smell the electricity in the air. I thought, for a moment, I saw something in those clouds. A dark shape. A round disk. I was 17, and she was my first love. She laughed with total freedom - throwing her head back and losing herself. Her eyes sparkled and her whole mouth showed. She never covered her face and I could count the teeth in her mouth. It was not a light tinkling laugh, but one that came from deep within her, and consumed her. She snorted and chortled and roared. Her garden was overgrown and wild. I don't remember her moving in, but I do remember a time when she did not live there. The earth was barren and rocky. And then a time came when she lived there, and it seemed as though she always did - as though she sprang from the rock and clay fully formed, house, garden and all. She was no older than I, though I never saw any family. She grew tomatoes and cucumbers, Basel, thyme and rosemary, lettuce and squash. She had chickens. She worshipped the earth, and the sun smiled on her. She was not what you would call conventionally attractive. She was tall, and her eyes were slightly too far apart. he forehead was larger than normal, and her feet slightly crooked, but She radiated life and light. Her presence seemed to fill every space around her, and her force was magnetic. She captivated me, and I, with the sun and the earth, worshiped her. On our first date, I took her to the movies. I forget what we saw. She talked the whole way through, though I didn't mind. Her voice was overwhelming. I clung to every word. On our third date we went to a field and I watched in awe as purple flowers bloomed around her, moved by her touch into life. We lay in those flowers for hours, her eyes sparkling in the fading light. 'Sometimes I think I am not of this world. Sometimes I feel the earth and the flowers around me, the sun on my skin, and as though I am bound by my body and physics, lost in this world. One day I will remember my true nature and be free from this plane of existence. Unbounded' When I was 18 there was a lightning storm. It lasted for hours, the sky flashing and light dancing around me. I could smell the electricity in the air. I thought, for a moment, I saw something in those clouds. A dark shape. A round disk. The world seemed to change in some underlying way, and at that moment I felt as though I was suddenly falling, as though gravity no longer held me and the earth was no longer beneath my feet. When it passed the dark shape was gone. So was she. Her garden never wilted, and the sun seemed to smile on it always.