I've been lying here for over an hour now. You fell asleep long ago, curled against me, the curvature of your back fitting neatly in my embrace, my arm draped across your side.
You're beautiful in your sleep. You're beautiful when you're awake, too, but when you fall asleep at my side, I see in you a beauty that only the serenity of pure contentment can make manifest. When awake, I see the same hurt in you that you must see in me. Its the hurt of knowing that soon you and I will part ways; that our lives are inexorably spiraling toward a continuing to exist without one another. Its a subtle wounding, but it cuts me to the very core, and the hurt that I see reflected in your eyes every waking moment we spend together acts as a constant reminder of how painful our parting will be.
I don't want to get up, but I can't lie there anymore. I wish I could stay beside you, watching you sleeping peacefully, the moonlight coming through my bedroom window resting lightly on your skin and illuminating your sweet, carefree expression until the sun wakes you at first light, as it always does, before you smile sweetly at me and turn over to return to sleep.
But I cannot. Tonight, as I lay against you, breathing in the scent of your hair and lightly stoking your stomach with my fingertips, I am overcome with grief at the impending loss of you from my life.
Noiselessly, I kiss you on the shoulder before escaping the bed at its foot and I move toward the door. It is cold without you against me, and I pick up a pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt from the open dresser drawer. I turn to you again and see that you have not stirred, and I smile weakly. My melancholy is deepening with every second spent in your presence, and I force myself to turn away and leave you to your peaceful respite from our shared pain
I close the door to the bedroom and turn on the hall light. It casts a yellow din in the small hallway that spills out into the modest living area of my apartment. Everything is as we left it: the dishes remain unwashed on the table, the candles from our dinner have burned themselves out, and the single red rose in the vase remains undisturbed. But by this time it has been cut for nearly twelve hours, and despite the water its severed stem has been submerged in, the first signs of wilting are beginning to show.
I put the shirt and pants on, and pick up the dishes with the small bits of leftover pasta and the drying, clotting remains of my primavera sauce sticking to them, and I move toward the kitchen. I place the dishes in the sink with the full intention of washing them, but as soon as I get the water running I find that I've lost my motivation. I lay them flat and drop a dab of dish soap on them, content to leave them soaking instead.
I return to the living room and sit at my desk in the corner. I go through the usual routine: checking my e-mail, seeing if any of my friends are online, and glancing at the news. But its four-thirty in the morning - nothing interesting is going on, nobody is around to talk to.
And I sigh, because if ever I needed someone to talk to, it would be now. I know I could come and talk to you about anything. You'd help me, you'd listen, but I think that you and I are the only people that cannot help each other with what we are going through together. Really, I think all we can do is hurt each other, because as the day where we will move to two different parts of the world draws ever nearer, we become that much closer.
It scares me when I think about what we've become, and what's happening to me as a result. I've never felt this way before - so weak, so vulnerable. I keep playing it off in front of our friends, joking and laughing with all the guys, flirting with all the girls, and acting as if I'm on top of the world, but at the end of the day I come home exhausted from the charade and wishing I could sleep.
Or cry.
The latter desire scares me the worst. I haven't cried since I was in high school, almost five years ago now. A part of me hates myself for my weakness, and another part just pities me for letting myself get so involved in something that could never work out.
Its weird, ya know? We've both worked hard our entire lives to get to where we're going, and everything we've ever wanted is finally coming within our grasp, but we couldn't be more depressed about it. In five years, you'll be Dr. Marist, and I'll be Dr. Cardin. Its what we've always wanted, and now its finally becoming a reality. We should be exuberant. But then I'm forced to wonder: how many times will we see each other in that half-decade? Even when we do have breaks, will we have time to visit one another? Will we even want to? And my grief returns to me with renewed vigor.
I leave the desk and cross the room to the couch, where I sink into it's leather embrace as I reach for the television remote. For a few brief moments I flip through the channels mindlessly, not even taking in the myriad of infomercials and televangelists who dominate the airwaves at this time of night. Bored, frustrated, and no closer to finding fulfillment or resolution, I turn the television off and rise again.
I pick my iPod up from the charger on the bookshelf and place the headphones in my ears. I turn on the device and move back toward my computer, retaking my position in the well-worn desk chair. I pick my ska playlist, the most upbeat, cheerful list of songs I have ever compiled, and set it to random play.
Then I turn my attention to the computer. I feel compelled to write about something, but there's only one thing on my mind tonight, and I cannot draw any motivation or muse from any other topic as I stare at the screen with the word processor open, the cursor blinking monotonously on the blank page.
Finally, I resign myself to the feeling, and my fingers spring to life, clicking away at the keyboard in a delicate but passionate fervor. Suddenly, deeply intimate memoirs of my feelings for you burst onto to the screen. I am consumed by our history, and pages upon pages of our story begin to appear from nowhere.
I am so engrossed that I do not realize that two hours have passed and the sun is beginning to peak up over the horizon. Nor to I notice you entering the room until you lay a hand upon my shoulder and kiss me lightly on my neck.
"You weren't in bed," you explain. "I was worried."
I take my earphones off and turn from my place at the desk to face you. You've put on my black cotton jacket that I'd left on the floor the previous night and zipped it up to keep warm, but your legs are still bare, and goosebumps have already begun to appear on your calves and thighs. You look beautiful with the sleep still weighing heavily upon you, and I smile at you warmly, but weakly.
"I couldn't sleep," I say to you, placing an arm around your waist and drawing you to me. You sit on my lap in the desk chair and wrap your arms around my neck. I kiss you deeply and you moan lovingly before pulling back and smiling at me, keeping your eyes closed for a moment longer, savoring the transitory feeling of shared oneness.
"What are you writing?" you ask, taking your arms from around me and using one foot to rotate the chair back toward the desk so that you can look at the monitor.
"Nothing in particular," I say, trying to suppress my sadness as I hold you by the waist, enjoying your warmth and the familiar contours of your body against mine yet again.
But you are not dissuaded by my half-hearted defense of my privacy. You find this letter that I've been writing these past few hours, this debacle that has become a declamation of my pain, an admission of my deepest fear, and a treatise on my irrepressible suffering of every moment spent with you, borne not from our time together, but from the coming time that we will be apart.
You read these hastily written and unedited pages silently, your eyes fixed upon the words on the screen as I hold you. I'm afraid of how you're going to react. You always get angry with me for not sharing my feelings, and I fear the reprisal for never expressing my anguish to you.
But as you reach the end, I notice a tear has formed in the corner of your eye, and I watch it streak down your cheek, leaving a wet trail on your face. It reaches the side of your chin and hangs suspended upside down for a moment before slipping off and splashing silently on your bare thigh.
"Are you mad?" I ask, tightening my hold around your waist as I lean forward, resting my chin on your shoulder.
"No," you say, stifling a whimper as you wipe at both of your eyes with your fingers." I can't blame you for not talking about any of this." I kiss you on the shoulder then rest my forehead on your back just below your neck.
"It hurts," I say. "It hurts so much that some days I dont know what I'm going to do without you in my life." I know that there will always be the phone and the internet and visits home and the like, but we are both aware of the fact that such communictions won't be able to make up for what we have right now, at this very moment, and I feel you tense slightly as I speak the words.
"It hurts me too," you say with a sigh. "That's why I can't be mad. I can't talk about it either."
I feel that long forgotten stinging at the back of my eyes, and a salty liquid from some heretofore unknown reserve begins to empty into my vision, blurring my world into a misshapen haze.
We sit in silence, unmoving. You dont realize what's happening to me until I'm unable to choke back one of the sobs. Upon hearing it, you leap from my lap and turn to face me. You've never seen me cry before. In all the time you've known me, you've never seen tears in my eyes, and you are surprised and frightened. The look on your face, still blurred by the tears, is one of confusion and anguish. You don't know what to do.
But then clarity seems to come to you, and fear is replaced by affection, confusion with sympathy. You pull me to you, wrapping your arms around my neck. I sob into your breast for what seems like ages, and you hold me, rocking me gently back and forth, silently trying to comfort me.
Countless times I've held you as you've wept over the years, and now, for the first time, you are able to return the favor, and I can feel nothing but gratitude for having had the joy of knowing you. My fears of losing you are swallowed by an overwhelming gratefulness for the time we have had together, and for the love that you have made me feel for you. I am keenly aware that I will never hurt more than I will when we part ways, but I know that the happiness that you have brought to my life has been worth every bit of it.
Getting my tears under control, I look up into your beautiful green eyes. "I love you," I say, holding you tightly. You bend town and kiss me sweetly.
"I love you too," you answer as you pull back, your face less than an inch from my own as you echo these beautiful words.
I rise, and together we return to the bedroom. The sun has made it's full presence known over the far horizon, and the room is bathed in yellow and orange light as we crawl back into the bed and under the covers. You are against me again, the curvature of your back fitting neatly into my embrace once more as we drift quickly and quietly into the world of peaceful respite together.
