I'm not sure if you know this, or if you're even awake, but this moment endures. I can feel it decelerate as you breathe softly beside me. I feel this when I'm near you and it just keeps slowing down.
I don't want to imagine where I would be if we weren't here in this hotel room. I just want to feel this with you, curled in the sheets while the traffic lumbers outside.
Saturday started with a few drinks, laughing, smoking cigarettes on the back patio, and watching moths flutter around the bare light bulb. They made the pull chain swing soft shadows around us.
You touched the scar that ran the length of my arm, and smiled when you said: "...and how did THAT happen?"
It's so strange. How is it that you pull my silliest stories out of me? Seriously... out of nothing at all, like you're unravelling a sweater. It must have been your fingers tracing up and down my forearm that made me babble out the story. I talked on and on just to make certain you wouldn't stop touching me. My story fell out of me and it was like wool strands in a pile before you.
I looked at you completely disarmed. There was chocolate on your lip and I thought there was a moth in your hair, so I leaned forward to brush it away, and you just melted forward to my mouth. I just wanted that moment to breathe you and I just forget everything else. God, it was what I wanted.
So what if you were only here for the weekend, and you weren't coming back? or that I was spending my rent money on beer and pot so we could relax in the cool air. Who cared if the night was a little cold for August? Who cared? What did it matter in the long run?
I understood why you pulled away and said I couldn't feel anything for you. I knew the situation was just too simple and trite. It was too late anyway. That's what made me pull you out of your chair and onto my lap - I didn't care when your glass shattered on the concrete and doused my shoes in rum and coke. It was fucking bliss and the moment knew it as surely as I. I was trying to complete some phrase that was running through my head. I think it started with "I've loved you for a long time but..." I wasn't brave enough to finish it.
We wasted too much time being friends and it suddenly didn't matter anymore. I knew that if I didn't accept my feelings I would carry them in silence for the rest of my life. That was too long, and you were right there.
Maybe I figured it out, hours before, when we skipped out on my roommates at McDonald's. Maybe it was in the park where you wore my jacket and found a handful of unused Kleenex, crumbling and soft, in the right pocket. I didn't have any clue how long they'd been there but I guess I put them there, last year, for just that moment.
You always knew the right reasons to cry and it amazes me. I've never seen anything so beautiful that it made me cry, or had any moments like that... I know this is a failure on my part. I wish I could find something to cry about other than pain, but you made me catch my breath. There were tears in my eyes and I had to blink them away.
All that time we walked I kept expecting my demons to rise up and still my feelings. I expected them to just push it all away.
And here, in the dark, I keep expecting them to drag me into hell while you lay here. I know I'd just struggle helplessly while you watch everything I feel just drain away into nothing. It never happened... that conflict and the certainty of our end just makes me feel this more. Does it have to happen? It's good to look at you and feel those dark things trying to drown me in vain. I am stronger, better by opening myself to you even though I know that it can't last.
I feel as if I'm waving my hand, just above the water, and watching you rise over the horizon. You're a blinding gleam with clouds as i sink. But I know that you see my hand rising out of the surface to wave goodbye to you. I can see you smile in your sleep.
I feel you move next to me in this time-stopped moment, and I watch you lay against my skin and touch me. I know I'll be able to remember the feeling, but I wonder what I will remember next year or if it will matter.
Because it's dark now and the only light I can see comes in as a narrow slit between dark green hotel curtains... My god you're beautiful. I think I could spend my life in this place, in this room, in this moment trying to fend off the time. It's a little past four in the morning and I know I can't ignore the world forever, you can't. Time is creeping back into the room and I hate the fact that the phrase in my head, "I've loved you for a long time but" can only end with goodbye.
So, I'm going to kiss you awake now. This is Sunday. We're not getting any younger.