If you get to spend your life with your soulmate, you are devastatingly lucky.

Meeting them is hard enough, but dating them and marrying them statistically is next to impossible. 7 billion people. One of you, and one of them.

Sadly, no, one of the saddest things is that,

People settle for comfort.

They settle for money, for stability, for family approval.

And while I’m not saying that’s bad,

How can you live your life without ever finding out the big what if? Perhaps I'm overly naive or hopeful, yet I wonder. Can you be content? Can you stand to spend your life with someone else? And leave your soulmate to someone else?

I’d rather be living paycheck to paycheck in a raggedy apartment if it meant I could dance in the rain with my soulmate, watch old movies and think ordering chinese food is a treat. I know with capitalism and the way the world works, it’s not that easy. It's not that clean-cut. But love isn’t either. Love is incredibly complicated.

We all burn brightly, but only for a glimpse in history. Wouldn't it be a shame if we never tried to find the person we were meant for? Never tried to make it work? I’d rather give my life to the what if, then spend all of my life wondering about it.

I know you're scared but it's ok, I'm right here, push me away, go on, as hard as you can, I'm not budging. I know you feel alone, but you're not, I'm right here, why can't you see me? I know it's hard, but I'm right here, I'd never leave you, I'm not like the rest, I care, I love you. Come, let me hold you, i Know you can't sleep, I hear you cry late at night, covering your ears to protect yourself. Shhh it's ok I'm here now you don't have to cry anymore, I'm here.

a Kingdom among

the stars,

a tale as old

as time,

a destined meeting

across the galaxy,

a soul-bond

created from cosmic dust,

a waltz on

the face of a cratered

silver moon,

a melody composed

and strummed

on the rings of Saturn,

spilled ink

tattooed on the soul

…and in Divine timing

they couldn’t escape the

collision

that would eventually

cause a vein in the heart

to echo a familiar

beat.

I'm right here,

In your mind,

And in your heart.

I'm right here.

By your side,

Right within your own view.

I'm right here,

Right within you,

Because, I am you!

"Don’t worry, I’m right here."

He had said while hugging his girlfriend.

The one who was known for having panic attacks in the middle of the night.

The one people were always talking about.

One day the girlfriend asked: "Don't you care about what people say about me? Why do you stay? I feel like nothing but a burden to you..."

The boyfriend simply laughed and said: "You are anything but a burden to me. You are the most caring person in my life, and thats saying a lot. People who judge you are people who never felt true love in their life. I would do anything for you, and don't ever think you are never 'good enough' in my eyes."

This had made the girlfriend cry, but not in her usual sadness, but happiness that she hasn't had in years. when the boyfriend nodices he says:

"I'm right here"

Old memories tend to hit the hardest in depressive times. From the honey suckles my brother and I hunted for in the backyard of our old house. To the lavender my grandmother would put into her nighttime tea, the smell would always consume the house and bring happiness to every nook and cranny.

This life seemed distant but it was mine. Funny to think that the sadness of losing a loved one consumed me and the memories I held dear.

The smell of spices and the gentle yet salty breeze that entered through our open back door leading to the ocean, they almost seemed unreal. You almost seemed unreal.

I couldn’t reach the memories. At least not today.

General knowledge is the modern celebration of our Western attempts to dislocate meaning from any commitment, to use vague adjectives and fluffy adverbs to remove any life from my semantics. Life becomes the finite reduction of ourselves, the choices we make that close doors to difference and lock us in our characters. The uniform complexity of these sentences removes all rhythm, any pattern established becoming essentially meaningless with the pointless profusion of Latinate words. A great calm might come over you when we talk about freedom, and what greater freedom than the freedom from meaning? And such freedoms can be found in the platitudes of corporate business, such dismal appeals such as ‘just do it’ and ‘be yourself’. If you or I were rich I doubt we would need to find a website like this. But still we continue to write for faceless strangers, upselling and upvoting that which is most generic and loosest in context. Feel good for doing so, for being general, generic, unsituated.

"It's broken!" Bayzle yelled in the nick of time.

The ambulance skidded to a halt inches from the abyss that once was Edalman Street. Bayzle held the young patient, who was still struggling to breathe, and tried to keep the machine in the girl's mouth. Herald swore and swerved around towards the city. The Empire State Building was still ablaze and people were screaming in the streets. Herald sped thorugh them and looked around.

"The hospitals are all closed!" he replied.

"Unless you want to lose your grandniece, you should make a pimp decision," Bayzle snarled back.

Herald rolled his eyes and pulled into the driveway of a quaint house.

"What are you doing?" Bayzle demanded.

"I'm saving her. Give her to me."

Holding the apparatus together as best she could, Bayzle handed the girl off and in a flash, they were inside the house. Bayzle barely got a breath out before she heard the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire. She raced from the ambulance and into the house to see Herald holding a glock to the head of a small boy. Bullet holes lined the ceiling.

"What the fuck!" Bayzle yelled.

"They want a monster, I'll give them a monster. You," he said, pointing the weapon at a sobbing, middle-aged man, "fix her. Now!"

The man dropped to his knees and crawled to the young girl, who was laying on the table, struggling to breathe. The man looked at her, flustered, and stumbled with various broken unsterilized medical equipment. The girl looked at him tiredly as her breathing slowed. Herald fired another bullet into the ceiling and everyone in the room screamed. The litle girl looked at the ceiling and a cinematically beautiful tear fell down her cheek. Her breathing slowed and slowed, and the family of hostages began to sob as if they were losing their own child. The little girl took her last breath and faded, and Hearald screamed.

Just before he could fire a bullet into everyone in the room including himself, I rolled my eyes and went back to My 600lb. Life.

Giddah finished swiping a quick message to his mother, a word-flourish to celebrate a difficult sale in another busy week in the office in Dubai. He reluctantly placed his phone on the table-for-two in the restaurant, its black case stark against the white cloth bleached clean for the evening’s entertainment. No message buzzed back. He started at the empty chair ahead of him. Around him the hubbard of the restaurant continued, conversations chattering in happy communion. The waiter had come to fill his glass of iced water for the second time just now, his attempt at a warm exchange still hanging awkwardly in the air. If he wasn’t talking about going to market or finding synergies or any other term from his MBA, he struggled for words. There wasn't much time for human chat while he pursued his dreams of fortune. Still, the struggles of reading business textbooks were best bearable when staring out his highrise apartment, considering the sleek landscape of Dubai, a sky prickled with lances of buildings, each construction costing lives both in deaths of workers and in the dedication of professionals like him.

His relationships at work were purposefully mundane. To close his deals and manage his projects, he kept a professional distance for those who passed through the office. His five years in Dubai was a lot longer than most of his colleagues, something he did not expect to change. But as proud as Giddah’s mother seemed to be at his success in business, he knew she dreamt of grandchildren. What use was money without someone to continue the dynasty his sacrifices were creating?

But meeting a worthy woman was not easy. He had tried one dreamy romance with ‘liquid girl’, a colleague who would threaten to sleep with him one day yet return no texts the next. There was more to her than that even when his busy mind could not yet admit such truths.

Online dating was no better. Professional women seemed absent from that arena, only residing in the rarified spheres of happy families and other circles distance from him and his highrise apartment. Still, a few dates had proven interesting, and he had found himself dating one secretarial girl, Anita, for a few months at least. Always, though, his mother’s voice spoke to him: will she be the one? Will she stick with you?

Tonight seemed to be little different. He was to meet Iman, a quality control manager from Syria. They had exchanged some interesting messages, wishing each other goodnight most days for several weeks now. He wondered how they would connect in person. Waiters walked past him as he picked up his phone again, distractedly scrolling through unread messages CC’d to him from those who wanted his job, or his salary, or at least his favour. Despite the continual scrolling of his thumb, every figure who entered the restaurant snapped his eyes up and away. It was not her. A woman entered the restaurant moved from 'mate' to 'stranger' in moments from detecting her presence, a potential life melting from her in invisible strands as she stepped into the restaurant with another, luckier man. The third time this happened his heart danced as he noticed. She had enterered.

The intensity of his gaze made his guts squeeze hot, his thighs tensing in instant attraction. She looked more beautiful in the flesh than even her pictures, her flushed face framing her firey eyes, her night-black hair darker still than her plush coat. The waiter pointed out Giddah’s table. With strangely tepid steps she began to pick her way through the other lovers in the restaurant. Spying a particularly tricky gap between two chairs, a space tiny thanks to a well-girthed man who laughed too loudly between bites of bread, she retreated towards a slightly longer route, her eyes tracking the marbled floor.

As they finally met she smiled a full close-lipped smile: we meet at last! they both said. She sat down and he began to speak about his day, of the project to-do list that he had worked through, a system he had devised ever since that difficult third year when Ramesh had almost got them all fired through his indecision. She smiled and complimented him, her tired eyes urging him to continue. As he spoke more about Ramesh and his project management system, she fiddled with her ear, a wonderful brown thing that seemed like a beautiful cake, a precious nibble. She tapped her ear in time with his conversation, two fingers typing an unspoken message as he regailed the finer points of his system.

The waiter came back too soon before he could finish his story, handing them both a pair of oversized menus. Turning the pages aimlessly, he tested if she wants a starter, or even a drink. She spoke uncommitedly, her face blocked by the menu, wieldeding it like a shield. His heart dropped and he ordered a wine, the same midrange 80USD bottle of Caymus Napa he often charged to expenses when with a decent client.

At mention of the wine her menu dropped below her mouth and her eyes widened like two moons rising. She says how nice it would be and that it was going to be good night after his hard day. Her mouth opened and she leaned forward, her teeth now bared with the bombast of newly awoken child. Despite not being able to pronounce Caymus Napa, she agreed it was an excellent choice and yes she has always fancied it.

As the waiter pours the test sip into Iman's glass, Giddah fights a fleeting thought -whether she wants him for his money. She is beautiful and smart and clearly likes him. As he begins to apply to his project formula to their burgeoning relationship, her voice fades into the background. She is talking about her dreams to leave Dubai and start a better life. Her voice distracts him from his thoughts. She's beautiful! He will never be able to know whether she likes him from her face alone, Giddah decides. And he doesn’t really care, at least for now.

Her dreams are not for sale, but at least he can buy a fantasy for now.

It will only be ten years from now in a lonely apartment in Canada when Iman has left him that he realises that his dream of love was only bright fragments, and that this beautiful evening in Dubai had dropped into the grim confirmation of his gut’s memory.