An apology and a memory

Beloved one,

I woke up yesterday with tears hot on my cheeks, fear clawing at my chest like a beast trying to rip its way out through my ribs.

I knew that you would leave, knew that you would walk away as surely as I knew the taste of bile in the back of my throat.

There was no doubt in my mind that before day's end, I would lost you.

But when I talked to you in the morning, I pasted the smile to my face, letting myself take honest joy in what I knew would be my last conversation with you as Mine. I reveled in your sleepy voice, high and soft and rough with sleep. I bathed in the soft sounds of joy you made when I told you that I loved you, wrapping them like spun glass in the recesses of my mind, a tightly held balm against the pain I knew would come. I listened to your rustling movements in bed, seeing you in my mind's eye sprawled in your soft sheets, and I smiled even as tears burnt the backs of my eyes.

And then I went about my day, I wandered alone in a city 3,000 miles from my home, idly watching the people around me. I noted their movements, smiled reflexively at those who greeted me, and all the time my mind was full of you, full of all that I knew I would lose. Your face, soft and open when I'm inside of you, your smile wise and kinder than you'll admit when I am small and frightened. Your hands small and quick and nervous when you clean. Your tremulous smile when I kiss you as a man, and your slow, wicked grin as you ride me. Your face lighting with passion as we chat for hours about the things we love, your narrowed eyes and manic smile when you hurt me, your shy eyes when you curl up tight against me. A hundred thousand images flashed before my eyes and broke my heart a hundred times over: you folding clothes, obsessively neat. You at work, focused and proud. You curled close to me, watching a movie. You hurting me, mad eyes and tender hands. You spread out before me, a feast for my senses. You shopping, movements graceful and restrained. You at my dining room table, laughing and talking. You grinning sideways, that delicious, wicked expression. You on your couch, primal and barely restrained. Every image a glass shard in my heart, ripping me slowly, inexorably open. Over and over I saw you, everywhere that I looked. Architecure I wanted to point out to you, dresses I wanted to laugh with you over, pretty boys with their hipster hair I wanted to laugh with you about. Sad murals I wanted to share with you, good food, all of it wrapped around my heart like barbed wire and I bled inside.

Finally, with heavy steps I came home to talk to you, dreading every step, afraid of every word I'd have to write. When you greeted me, I was both afraid and joyful. I leapt into the conversation because I knew that if I didn't, I'd never have it. I'd give in to the temptation to conceal it from you, the nagging hopee that maybe I wouldn't lose what has become so precious to me.

Every keystroke punctuated by a tear, by a stabbing sensation in my chest, by the certainty of loss.

...and then you didn't.

Then you were quiet as you conferred, and you simply accepted in me what I cannot accept myself.

And then you told me that you love me, and the tears spilled out, spilled open in me and my heart was still bleeding but it was marked by joy now and the disbelief that this was really happening.

Were you truly still here? Would I still really be able to hold you, be able to taste your lips and hear your precious voice? It was too much, too deep, too sudden,and I couldn't believe it, couldn't process it, could only curl into myself a release the shaking sobs that had hidden inside of me all day.

I still have trouble believing it, still have to reach sometimes for the twine you had me tie around my wrist, my tangible reminder of your love and your presence.

I still keep waiting for you to change your mind, to look at me with horror and disgust, and just as you told me so long ago in the darkened car... you prove me wrong. Every time.

I've never been so grateful to be wrong before.

I love you.