I have to admit, I’m a hopeless romantic. I saw this couple walking hand-in-hand by the Little Spokane and instantly thought of the strangers I captured with my lens in Leavenworth a few years ago, and before them the husband and wife who danced together one chilly autumn evening, believing themselves to be alone and never realizing that I had caught a glimpse of their love story.

The odds are very low, practically non-existent, that it really is the same couple I keep running into every few years… but I like to think it is anyway, that there is some wonderful and inexplicable force causing us to cross paths time and time again: the lovers and the silent observer, the story and the storyteller.

This post originally appeared on Beyond the Yellow Door.

Beyond the Yellow Door - Living Passionately with Chronic Pain

If you noticed me taking your photo as you walked away hand-in-hand, you probably thought I was creepy. Hopefully, you simply assumed I was photographing Leavenworth’s holiday decorations and weren’t concerned by the click and whir of my little camera, whose name is Lizzie by the way.

Either way, I want you to know that I love the moment I captured in the glow of the Christmas lights, the two of you swinging hands like a much younger couple, comfortable in your togetherness, quietly enjoying the beauty of the season. You remind me of the husband and wife I saw leaving the Davenport Hotel in downtown Spokane some years ago, who paused on the empty sidewalk to twirl in each other’s embrace, never noticing the silent observer across the street who would later write them into a poem.

an older couple in leather jackets leave
the restaurant to dance
a few turns on the sidewalk
beneath the streetlamps, the
stars, the towering night

Perhaps you actually are that husband and wife, and our paths have crossed again. Perhaps someday, a few years from now, I will be standing on a street corner in Sandpoint or Colville or Ellensburg, and I will see you dance once more, the only witness to your ongoing love story.

This post originally appeared on Beyond the Yellow Door.

Beyond the Yellow Door - Living Passionately with Chronic Pain