At this time, your purpose is unclear. But eventually, it will be apparent why you are here on Earth. I know every day is routine – your forty-five-minute commute to your job, the mundane workday, the chaotic drive back home through traffic to smoke weed in your living room, then eat something and fall asleep.

Today, you told me you never had romantic feelings of any kind. Those words knocked the breath out of me. My chest squeezed tight and I had to swallow multiple times to keep tears from spilling.

But do you remember when we walked through downtown so late it was practically morning? You offered your arm to me like a gentleman, and I took it. We walked aimlessly for hours.

When you do an internet search for “death of an unrequited love,” some interesting things pop up, but never the right ones. What about when the person for whom you have an unrequited love dies? What then? What about the closure that will never be, the hope that continued to exist, the possibilities that have now vanished? We had a story, in my mind. Now it will never have a resolution.

I met a man. It was during the winter months leading up to spring 1994. It wasn’t that type of meeting-a-guy situation, it was purely business, and for the sake of art.

I was twenty-two years old and had been dancing professionally for about four years. I was part of a dance company that performed traditional dances from the African diaspora.