Honestly, this is what I was thinking about writing on leap day (last Friday).

If I told you that I hated the month of February, would you believe me?

Of course the more interesting part is not what but why, and I would turn to you and tell you that currently I’m digging myself into trouble, but that’s not really what I’m thinking about. That’s because it’s much harder for me to really tell you why. It’s a flawed idea, something I’ve started and stopped and deleted and erased and retried many times.

* * * * * *

She and I kissed, for the first time, quite appropriately on New Year’s – but strangely enough, not at that magically chaotic midnight turn of the calendar. We kissed at 12:27am. I remember this because the confetti was already starting to settle, the tiny figures on the television screen starting to now stumble and welcome in the New Year after the cameras no longer had the bright and shiny ball to focus in on. In the midst of this, we kissed.

It was a release – not like the slow snail trail of a shiny ball making its way down – but a sudden explosion of emotion. We suddenly were no longer friends. We suddenly, found clothing to be optional, hands given free passes, and bodies clinging to each other in the bed of my cold apartment.

Then, quite unexpectedly, her mother died in the last week of February.

To say that it had an effect would be a gross understatement. You see, she was already fragile, and this merely launched her into a numbness I don’t quite know if she has (to this day) fully recovered from. Like some slow-motion post-traumatic-stress condition, it seeped into every aspect of her life, every word she would say, every word she would hear, and everything and anything.

You see, since I wasn’t part of the family – I wasn’t at the funeral. I wasn’t at the hospital, observing the final moments of breast cancer tugging away at the last bit of morphine-soaked life. I wasn’t there. But I was there after. I was there to stand by her side and to wipe the tears that came from memory; pain from memory not pain from shock. And when it wasn’t pain from loss it was anger from loss, and I was there for her, because, genuinely, I loved her.

Life, as it has been known to do, marches on. Even if it has to limp.

Maybe something went wrong in there. A year had gone by. And then two. And then three. And I would sit in a dark room, the computer screen splashing light into the otherwise blackness. I sat there, looking for something because I didn’t have it.

I still believe that love kept me there, with her, despite the one-sided-ness that I often felt, took, and kept close inside. I never told her that. I never told her many things, like how I wished she would sometimes do the dishes. I never told her that I was getting tired of waking up early and doing the laundry on Sunday mornings. I never told her that I was too tired (and that it was kind of late, at 10:44pm) to go out to the supermarket and get her ice-cream. Or to move her car from one side of the street to the other. I never, once, told her that little by little, I felt my love for her erode and crumble into dust carried on a bitter wind.

That’s kind of dramatic – because I still love her.

* * * * * *

It was a slow ellipse, the passing of time in that relationship. January remained high and full of promise, an anniversary, memories of the first kiss carrying us through to February, pink hearts and all. The turn came with the passing of the day her mother died. And so, the months that followed limped along, the axes sometimes tilting from one end to the other, but the two of us were still hurtling in the unknown familiar orbit, together.

And (to throw away any sort of implied conclusion) that is why I think about leap day and I ponder corrections and calendars and February and orbits and lots of things too difficult to put into words.