There’s a sultriness to my nights. In those moments when my mind has been cleared and my body is still, my heart speaks to me. In those moments after the daylight dust settles and the night mist begins to form, the greatest truths that I try to hide make themselves known. I am helpless, and I am made to listen.
And so I had a dream, and I can’t deny it’s truth even though when I awaken I will resist it.
I felt a hand in mine as the feeling came to life. I looked for its source, and there you were standing firm, your beautiful eyes fixed upon a scene. I felt the flow of soft power cascade through me at the very sight of you, a familiar flow that comes throughout my day when you enter my thoughts. I took a moment and just gazed at you, enjoying the love that I felt, tenderly squeezing the hand the sought me.
There are so many secrets I withhold from you in the daylight. There are so many things I feel, so many stories both written and untold in your name. There are bountiful unspoken words that never escape my lips and truthful intentions that you will never know. I leave your life freely yours as the Sun conspires to save me from my feelings. In the light of day I can use my strength of will to withhold from you the greatest truth of all.
I love you!!
Such beautiful words that never spill from my lips and that never grace your ears, hidden from you as the greatest testament to love I could ever offer. I’ve watched you spread your wings both with and against the gale, and heard your stories of wild independence and painful submission to the heart. I’ve seen you in your fear, felt you in your resistance, and basked in the glory of your compassion.
So, I am in love with you, and in love with you I leave you to your journey untethered by my hand, unkissed by my lips, unmoved by my truth. I leave you be so that I may joyfully yet painfully watch you in your space, and bask in your triumph from afar. I hold you firmly in a distant embrace and count the minutes apart from you, even when the numbers become to great for my heart to handle.
Isn’t that true love? Do I not love the rose I cannot cut? Do I not love the angel whose wings I refuse to clip, whose cloud I will not choose? Do I not love you more simply by not becoming a chain on which you bind yourself?
But ah! the pain of my empty hand upon this lonely waking moment. I think of you from a distance and my mind destroys the dream. I see you in my mind and my heart turns to something else. I am a warrior, one who guards the shuttered gates as fiercely as he opens them. For you, I guard the spaces that you roam with equal vigor, protecting the gate opened by a dream and then closed by a particular reality.
Yet, there are those moments in the stillness of night when the fortitude fades and the truth in me awakens. It seems they are not one in the same right now.
I feel your hand in mind as you study the scene before us. I hear my heart singing as my eyes take you in, my body surrendering to the truth, a story of lingering desire.
In that mist, my eyes follow yours to a scene that has your attention. There is a part of you lying ill upon a bed. My eyes go from the bed to you, and back again, trying to make sense of what I see. I feel you squeeze my hand as your head rests upon my shoulder, your body leaning more and more into me. I hear the image on the bed speak to you.
“You are free. I am almost gone, and you can move on.”
I get a sense of which part of you this is. It’s a part of me too.
“My fear is dying,” you say to me as you stay staring at the woman on the bed. “I’ve known her so long, it’s hard to imagine I won’t miss her.”
You lean more into me, and I become stronger to the task. I am your rock, and I will not fail you. Life has made me strong enough to hold us both.
“Go ahead and let it go,” the woman says to us both. I feel you move, and look to see where you are going.
You just turn, and look at me.
“I love you,” you say. “I’m sorry I made you wait.” Tears stream down my face in testament to a moment well worth the wait.
We kiss, finally.
Nothing that has happened matters. Ideas, thoughts, trials and tribulations all fade as our lips hold firm. Our lips part only to gaze back at the place where our fear rests. It seems it has faded too. There is nothing but a fire that remains. Perhaps we’ve lit a pyre as an homage to the moment.
I awaken peacefully, your final words echoing in my heart.
“Forever sounds so good with you.”
“It does,” I utter to the nothingness around me. I sigh as I close my eyes, hoping to capture forever the feeling of my dreaming moment.
I text you, you reply, I follow…then nothing.
Everything is back to normal. You come and go in a wisp, it seems, exactly as it should be. My thoughts bounce in and out of the insanity of it all. Let go and move on, says one voice. Hold firm and be patient, says another. I’m not sure which is the voice of insanity, and which is the voice of reason. Perhaps it doesn’t matter.
I am an acquired taste, I reckon. I am not for everyone, I suppose. I approach my dreams with a dose of reality, and my reality with a dose of a dream. I make no excuses for the star I follow, or the footprints I’ve left behind.
So, I’ll just say that I love you. You know who you are even if you remain anonymous outside the ether. You may or may not read this, although its very likely I won’t know if you do. I’ll just shout silently to every star that will listen and every sea that we sail that I love you. I’ll just ride the waves and see what shores I’m taken to, hoping one will take me to a dream where we stand, hand in hand, “forever” sounding so good to our ears.
I have a feeling you’ll be so worth the wait, even if I never find out.