Here to there.

Just look at me.

Please.

Look at me and tell me what I am, exactly.

Besides the obvious - what's here that you see that I don't? Because that is the root of confusion, love. You see things in me that I can't even imagine. Great deeds, or steadfastness. Something white, maybe.

But let me tell you a secret about white. It's the color of you and me. Angel aren't white. They're blue. Hell isn't black - it's yellow. You've mixed up all the words and colors.

Or they did.

White is my color, and yours, and that's all I see that might have been marginally attractive. Allow me a minute of margin, a moment of confusion.

I didn't come looking for anyone. I went searching for the words that had eluded me for so long. Words fall back into place after a year or so apart. It feels like coming home to earth, breathing air again that isn't pre-packaged and measured inside a protective atmosphere. That's home.

I speak truth when I concentrate, and I swear on a soul I'm not sure I have that I didn't go to look for anyone. Maybe his appearance kicked me so hard in the ribs because of that. I remember the man he was before the boy he became, not even a boy, but something folded and fuzzy on the outside lines. I remember his smile, like he didn't know pain or anger or sadness, and I remember just wanting a piece of that, to bask in the genuine peaceful perfection.

He came back as someone totally different, and it was a kick in the gut to realize what he had become. Friends and family die everyday. But when was your last moment of purity? Can't remember? Nor can I. But his was on record - memory.

His appeal changed from purest to tragic, a celebration of sadness and loss.

That's why.

That's all.

But I didn't go looking for anyone. I just happen to pick them up. Natural charisma? I don't know. A smile works wonders, sometimes, and the odd bit of unintentional flirting.

I swear I don't go looking for people. They find me. I have an invisible neon sign attached, I guess - "Need help? Seek within." The fine print must say "yourself" but no one ever reads fine print anyway.

They all come expecting miracles. I'm not what I once was. I gave up working miracles for a paid job preventing death. Except actually I'm just a desk worker, guarding papers, handing out basketballs and BandAids. I don't work miracles anymore, but the neon sign still glows invisibly and the people I know can see it.

I'm more packed with secrets than a vault, but I don't open except to a voice scan, and maybe to the sanctity of paper. It's all hidden anyway.

I don't go looking; they find me.

I attract the unbalanced - the girl whose mother is in Romania and whose family has disowned her. The girl who never stretched until she hit college. The girl who didn't know what love was until someone held a hand out instead of up. Most of them never knew what love was. Or what the possibility of love was. But my two now? I don't play lightly with poets. They're at higher risk for walking slowly and liking everyone equally.