"Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness." --Maya Angelou

There are so many ways to view the soul. You can view it through a person's eyes. You can listen to it through music. You can feel it in a touch. You can smell it on their skin and you can taste it in a kiss.

Many women believe that that first kiss tells them everything they need to know about a relationship.

I think it happens even sooner. I think it happens the moment you look into each others eyes. Souls speak to each other in that moment. Sometimes it's perfect, gut wrenchingly so. So intense that deep inside you feel yourself collapse, a flaw in the wall we all hold up to keep ourselves guarded and secure comes tumbling down.

And sometimes the colors don't compliment each other. A glance and a passing and soon forgotten, if it was never even registered in the first place.

I remember the first time I saw him. The wall didn't crash down. It was vaporized.

I never understood that, I never understood what those long time married couples meant when they said, "You'll know. You'll just know they're the one."

Him. Mine. No word was ever so wonderful.

Sometimes you feel so much love inside it has to come pouring out, rushing, aching, dying, thriving, shining. Spilling out in words and touch and music. Passion. Deep seeded passion.

Being a passionate person doesn't automatically make one predisposed to believing in that ferocious love that rips you limb from limb, leaving you lying there wondering what just happened to you, in so much pain and wanting it to happen again. It's almost masochistic. I take that back, it is. But it's beautiful.

I've always been a very passionate person but I never really believed I'd love someone with that much intensity. I never thought I'd find myself thinking of them and loving them so much it brought me to tears. Not for grief or even joy, just out of the sheer pain that kind of love brings.

Music. The song that plays during your first dance, your first kiss... The unforgettable song that plays the first time you have sex? But that sounds crude. It's not sex then, at least it shouldn't be. It should be love. Making love. Much better term for a moment that ought to be full of love.

Why is music so deeply entwined with love? A song plays on the radio and I smile. I remember that kiss, standing in the rain. I was the leading lady, my arms wrapped around the leading man's neck, his hands on my waist, my foot half raised in pure movie style. That perfect kiss. Tender soft. Memorable.

Player on shuffle... That CD I bought with him, a song from it starts. I blush. I remember. I'm making breakfast, I've got that CD on. He's standing in the kitchen with me and I'm dancing, dorky, awkward, not caring. He's laughing and I'm scrambling eggs, making goofy faces.

Memories wrapped around notes and lyrics.

Music is my refuge, my scrapbook, my life's soundtrack, varied, random. But mine. All mine.