From where had these feelings come? Walter thought. For he had not swallowed anything created by her body; neither had there been any physical contact, not even the brushing of sleeves in a crowded market. So these feelings for her—like fires lit in various parts of his body—must always have been within him, waiting to be lit.
And then Walter thought of something else. Could it be that first love was the only true love? And that after those first fires had been doused or burned out, men and women chose whom they would love based on worldly needs, and then reenacted the rituals and feelings of that first pure experience—nursed the flames that once burned of their own accord…
“The Coming and Going of Strangers,” Love Begins in Winter, Simon Van Booy
