...missing my best friend on a snowy day....

Every person has their soul unknowingly hidden from the rest of the world. We will live and die without ever knowing of this clandestine hiding place. We are all born with solitary souls and in our very first breath, the flooding light of the earth rampantly races inside to gather and hide our soul within the most secretive heat of our hearts, selectively placing it in the obscure and beating secrecy of our existence. The breaths that hide our souls are boundless, creedless, and blind, constantly moving from first breath to first breath—floating upon the lips of every first innocent indulgence—and in their passionate dances, these breaths are ever mindfully swift to capriciously hide our sacred souls before we’ve exhaled any of our true being into the world. As we exhale that first breath, the light swiftly whispers, hidden by the sound of our first crying, telling our hearts the place where we are to always, yet unknowingly, hide our soul. It is in this depth of our hearts, where our most unrestrained being, naked in purity, remains veiled until the last light of our final breath tenderly gathers our soul, defeated and lifeless, and carries it into a dying dust to be ever forgotten.

There are times when, in a collision of fate and forgetful imperfection, the flooding light of a first breath will hide a new soul in the exact same clandestine depth of the chaste heart where it has already, in another time, hidden another soul within another heart. When a new baby exhales, its soul is evermore hidden within the heart in a place where another baby has their own soul hidden in their heart by the same exact flooding light of the same exact first breath.


Two very different women, by flaw of fate, nearly twenty years ago, breathed the exact same first breath that was boundless of time or location. There were countless first breaths ceaselessly dancing and floating in every corner of everything that was, is, and is to be; and yet, their first breath was identical. How amazing, how impossible, how perfect, how unfathomable—the world would never know, but still held these girls as they grew. Each girl carrying differently painted soul, so differently crafted and molded, and yet cherished in the same location within their separately beating hearts. As they grew, neither girl was to ever imagine the importance that her first breath was to have on what her adolescence was to become.

The young girls, nearing adolescence, knew nothing of the other, until Destiny, one day, fell into a sleep and momentarily relinquished control of the earth. That perfect day, the girls fleetingly crossed paths in a dark church hallway, their eyes serendipitously met for a split second, never intending or ever expecting to linger—but in that fleeting glance, that split second, in seeing, there was an instantaneous rush and immediate internal recognition like the soul of one seeing its reflection in the other, only in vibrantly different colors. While the girls held their glance, and remained looking, their two souls did not just look at each other, they completely saw the other. Their separate souls, never seeing nor having been seen by another, fleetingly and instinctively, as if governed by a greater force, rushed upon the breaths of each girl, carried by the light, pulsing in between the young women, like a silk scarf carried by the wind, until both souls were together in both hearts, never to be seen or understood by the rest of the world, and never needing to be. Their shared souls tied together the heartstrings of the girls that night, and clandestinely and delicately weaved the two strangers together as time passed.

Neither girl can ever be able to explain what governs their connection—for they know not of the hiding place within their hearts shared by their souls, nor of the power held by their shared first breath taken, which forgetfully hid their souls in the same exact spot upon their different hearts. Two different souls, two different hearts, and the blessing of circumstance. The souls now move silently between the hearts of the two girls, never needing reassurance, never separated by distance or time. For what is known to the heart is never forgotten, and the souls, however hidden to the rest of the world, always and forever know where to find each other, which is always and forever the same hiding place upon the heart of the other. Their friendship was destined to be from the very day they were born, from their very first breaths---their friendship goes beyond circumstance—their friendship is destiny.

Years and years from now, when the women are old and delicate, their souls will not be lost or forgotten like the rest of the hidden souls but will live on eternally, not as two souls hidden in two hearts, but as one soul forever, because there is nothing ever capable of finding, knowing, or touching the beloved souls- for nothing and no one knows of their sacred shared hiding place within the hearts of the two girls, and nothing can pull one soul from the other, for only the other soul can ever find that sacred spot, hidden deep within the heart, where their friendship is held, known, loved, and laced in chocolate.