THE MATCH HE LIT AND LEFT BEHIND

He arrived like a cigarette I had no business craving.

Captured by Mitchell Royel in Moorpark, California. Now playing: “like a cigarette” by mxbeats, ken, dryftmode, suzi.

We followed the light first.

Not sunlight exactly—something dimmer, stranger, the kind of glow that slips between tree trunks and makes you believe the woods are trying to tell you a secret. We kept walking, shoes catching on roots, shoulders brushing pine and shadow, pretending we weren’t a little afraid of how far in we’d gone.

Every path started to look like a dare.

But there was something beautiful about being out there with no audience, no noise, no proof of anything except breath and instinct. Just the hush of the trees, the smell of earth, and that feeling that if you stayed still long enough, the forest might hand you back to yourself.

So we followed it deeper—the mystery, the music, each other.

And for a moment, it felt like the woods were following us too.

Not the first one. Not the reckless one stolen behind the school gym, all panic and perfume. More like the one you tell yourself you’ve outgrown. The one that appears in the hand of a beautiful stranger outside a dim restaurant, glowing at the tip, offering ceremony. A small flame. A reason to step away from the noise. A reason to inhale something dangerous and call it peace.

That was him.

A brief soothe. A burn dressed as blessing. A ritual I knew too well: the anticipation, the flick, the first pull, the lie that this was only for tonight. Only this once. Only because the moon was saying things and my body was listening.

When I saw him, something in me went quiet in the way a room goes quiet before glass breaks. Not peaceful. Charged. My nervous system put on lipstick. My intuition leaned forward. My common sense left her coat at the door and pretended she would be right back.

We talked like people who were standing at the edge of something and trying not to name it. There was warmth. There was voltage. There were little promises folded into casual sentences. The kind that don’t sound like vows, but land in the body as if they are. We’ll talk. I want to see you. We’ll connect again. That low, easy confidence men sometimes have when they are holding the match and you are already smoke.

So I texted him.

And then: nothing.

No response.

Just the blue-white silence of my phone. Just the tiny altar of the screen lighting up for everyone but him. Just me checking, then not checking, then checking with the false dignity of a woman pretending she has not organized her entire bloodstream around a notification.

His silence did not match the tone of our conversation. It did not match the softness in his eyes, or the way his attention had moved toward me like it had intention. It did not match the little door he opened and invited me to stand near. It did not match the promise implied by his voice.

And yes, I know. People get busy. Phones die. Lives are layered. Desire is not a contract. Chemistry is not a calendar invite. I am a grown woman with spiritual tools, self-respect, and a decent understanding of attachment theory.

Still.

The body keeps its own court.

My body said: objection.

My body said: we were told there would be warmth here.

My body said: why does this feel like withdrawal?

Because that is the thing about a cigarette. It is small, but it becomes an empire. It is momentary, but it installs a clock inside you. It gives you something to do with your hands when you don’t know where to put your longing. It makes absence feel like a craving and craving feel like proof.

Then he told me he was going out of town.

A simple sentence. Nothing cruel. No grand betrayal. No cinematic abandonment. Just logistics, apparently. He was leaving. He didn’t know exactly when we would see each other again. Or maybe he did and didn’t say. I didn’t know what he would be doing, who he would be with, what version of himself would exist in rooms I could not enter.

But he said we would connect again.

There it was. The ember.

Just enough.

Not a plan. Not a date. Not a hand on the heart. Just a future-shaped phrase. A little glowing tip in the dark. Enough to keep me reaching for the pack.

I wanted to be elegant about it. I wanted to be the woman who smiles with soft detachment and returns to her jasmine tea, her clean sheets, her sacred discipline. I wanted to say, Of course, love, travel well, and mean it from the crown chakra down.

Instead, I threw a tantrum in my bedroom.

Not the adorable kind. Not the cinematic kind with mascara and a silk robe and one perfect tear. A real tantrum. Private. Undignified. Primal. I paced. I flung myself onto the bed. I sat up again. I cursed into the air. I argued with no one and everyone. Him. God. My phone. My own stupid hope. My own beautiful, inconvenient heart.

I was furious at the gap between what was said and what was happening.

I was furious that I could be so affected by someone so new.

I was furious that desire had found the loose floorboard in me and was now prying it open with both hands.

I hyperfocused until the room became a tunnel. The walls softened and sharpened. My thoughts began circling the same small flame: What did he mean? Why didn’t he answer? When will he come back? Is he thinking of me? Did I invent it? Did I feel it alone? Was I too much? Was he not enough? Is this intuition or obsession wearing perfume?

Then I stood in front of the mirror.

There I was.

Wild-eyed. Tender. Annoyed with my own tenderness. Hair slightly tragic. Face flushed with the humiliation of wanting. I looked like a woman who had been visited by a god and then left on read by a man.

And I stared.

Not the quick glance we give ourselves before leaving the house. Not the evaluation scan. This was witnessing. This was the long, merciless, merciful look. The kind where the soul finally stops making noise and tells the truth.

I saw the longing first. Then the fear underneath it. Then the devotion underneath that.

And then the realization landed with a thud so clean it almost became holy:

I was hopelessly in love.

Not reasonably interested. Not lightly intrigued. Not enjoying the flirtation. Not “seeing where it goes,” that modern little anesthesia.

Hopelessly.

Meaning my hope had already run ahead of me barefoot. Meaning my heart had lit the candle before the church was built. Meaning some part of me had decided, without my consent, that this man was not just a man. He was a doorway. A weather system. A cigarette after years of clean lungs. A burn I had mistaken for warmth.

And because I love myself now, because I have earned some wisdom through gorgeous mistakes and expensive healing, I knew this was not a situation to romanticize without supervision.

This would need crisis management.

Not suppression. Not shame. Not pretending I was above it. Crisis management with candles and boundaries. With water. With prayer. With friends who tell the truth. With nervous system care. With not texting again just to prove I am casual when I am absolutely not casual. With remembering that intensity is not always intimacy. With asking myself what part of me is starving and why a small plume of attention feels like a feast.

I would need to manage the fantasy like fire.

I would need to keep my hands away from the lighter.

I would need to let the ache after the burn teach me something other than how to crave more.

Because the cigarette is not evil. It is honest in its way. It says: I will calm you for a minute and cost you later. It says: I will give your longing a shape, but I will not make you whole. It says: you can turn me into a ritual, but I will still leave smoke in your hair.

And maybe he will come back. Maybe we will connect again. Maybe he will walk into my life with his beautiful timing and his impossible mouth and his half-made plans, and I will feel that familiar strike of the match.

But now I know.

The glow is not the same as devotion.

The burn is not the same as warmth.

The craving is not the same as love, even when love is inside it.

So I am here, in my bedroom, in the aftermath of my own little storm, practicing the sacred art of not abandoning myself just because someone else has gone quiet. I am letting the wanting move through without letting it drive. I am holding the part of me that fell so fast, so fully, and I am not mocking her for it.

She is not weak.

She is alive.

She is just learning, again, that some flames are meant to be admired from a distance. Some are meant to be prayed over. Some are meant to be walked away from before the whole house smells like smoke.

-Ryder