He asked, “Wanna ride my Harley?”
I said yes.

I don’t know why I didn’t ask where we were going,
or what time we’d be back.

I always make sure I’m prepared for what might happen.
But that day, I only brought my wallet,
my cellphone,
and myself.

He pulled up in front of my apartment building.
Dashing. The kind of presence that could make a street pause.
The kind of image that would make women turn their heads,
and maybe sigh once he was gone.

He put the helmet on my head,
helped me up,
then took his seat and drove—
maneuvering a thousand-pound machine like it was weightless.

He was in charge.
I was just a passenger.

At every stop,
his hands would reach back for my legs,
rubbing my thighs gently—
as though to say, I got you.

And then, as we left the city
and slipped into the hush of the suburbs,
I felt it.

The breeze.
The stars.
The sky like open arms.

Time slowed, or maybe it stopped mattering.

And for the first time in my life,
I surrendered completely.

I wasn’t in charge.
I wasn’t directing.
I wasn’t responsible for anything.

A thousand moments from my past
condensed into a single second.
A strange, silent knowing bloomed inside me—
that everything that ever happened,
had happened just so this moment could be.

It wasn’t an answer to my questions.
It was a moment that made the questions irrelevant.
It didn’t matter whether there were answers.

My problems didn’t disappear.
But in that moment,
they no longer held power.

And then it struck me—
This must be what death is like.

A moment when all the noise falls away,
and the weight of what you once carried
no longer presses against your chest.

The petty fights.
Possessions.
Wealth.
Validation.
Ambition.
Standing in society.
And many things we valued.
They lost all their relevance.

It wasn’t that nothing mattered.
It revealed what truly did.

It was a surrender—
not in defeat,
but in clarity.

A sense of wholeness.
Like being freed from our chains.
Like a droplet of water being embraced by the ocean.
A kind of return.

And if this is what death is like,
then I’m comforted—
for all our loved ones who’ve passed before us.

I was in tears—
not from grief,
but from awe.

Because in that moment,
I was held.
Truly held.

Not by him.

But by the universe itself.