Swept away in a moment by chance

We weren't looking for it and didn't see it coming; the tide is predictable, what happened to us was not.

A chance meeting, against the odds, a small but profound moment like the space between the incoming and outgoing tides in which everything changes. We were swept away in that moment by chance and it felt like falling but I was happy to fall with you, the fall was as beautiful as the sunrise.

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It captivated me - whatever it actually was - you captivated me, and together we tumbled, entangled, falling together into a deep and boundless place...falling into love.

Chance played its hand and we took each others', allowed that chance moment to sweep away all that came before it ait carried us forward to what would come from it - who knew where, who cared - we were happy to be lost knowing we'd be lost together wherever the tide carried us.

We weathered unbidden storms and those we created, drifted aimless sometimes, but always with an outstretched hand so the other may find and grasp it, and we always managed to find each other, hold tight and face the storm. Together. We'd been swept away in a moment by chance, taken by the tide of love and no matter the storms we faced we overcame them, clung together, and found calmer waters. We were good at that, I remember you saying so; I thought we always would be.

Like the tide takes time to turn rock to sand, washing over them inexorably and unceasingly it can take time for love to rise. It comes like the rising tide, slowly and surely, washing over two people, washing them away like that chance moment did with us. Sometimes love comes like the relentless crashing of mighty waves pounding the shore...Sometimes.

But just as love surges, it wanes. Love comes and goes. Chance visited again, and in a moment I was swept away.

In the moment it takes to read a handful of words I was cast adrift, torn from you, taken by the tide of chance, washed up upon the lonely shore of a distant place like flotsam, alone and unwanted. We didn't do that together, you did it yourself.

There was no longer an outstretched hand to reach for, that hand reached for another, it was someone else's to hold.

The tide of love receded, no longer did it wash over us, no longer did we move together like the rhythmic and perpetual ebb and flow of the tide...*there was just the perpetuality of time moving without you and the sound of my heart beating alone and no longer in symphony with your own. It beat sorrowful and empty echoes of the heartbeats that were once yours, just echoes that the storm carried away when you left. My heart had come apart.

I couldn't breathe, I was drowning, or had already drowned, I cared not which. I couldn't catch my breath.

Chance.

I wondered is chance took you away as I drowned, if the same chance that had brought you to me also took you away.

It was by design though, a wilful decision - you'd been swept away from me and towards someone else by your own passions, necessities and for the sake of convenience...and you'd not cared enough to reach for me to connect, stand together, as we'd done so many times - you just looked forward and away from me, by your own choice, not chance.

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As beautiful as the sunrise, I'd thought, as powerful and dependable as the tide and strong enough to endure, to take each moment we had together and weave it right into the next moving us closer together and towards the future we knew would come. As linked as the moon and tides, as constant as the rise and fall of the sun...I was wrong though, it was all a lie - and oceans stand between us, one tide ebbing and another rising.

[Fiction based on the word tide.]

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