I was the only one
Who could stare until you were done
Shining on me.
I've made this post before. I find that... unbearable, and perfect, and perfectly unbearable. How is it that I've come here twice? This inimitable, incalculable, undiscoverable place... I could be a river-guide here, could dodge pitfalls and sinkholes, chart the depths and cruel shores of this well-known sea... where people who have never been in love dream of drowning.
Aye, I know this place. And seeing it again, after years, a different woman than I was when I saw it last - I know it better. I know the senseless, mindless dream that this week has been, more helplessly swallowed by the moment than I've known how to be since I was a child, forgetting all else in the world but this feeling, this breath, this hour that passes all too quickly... And I know the pain of this day too, the raw and wrong sense that something is amiss, the dislocation of a limb I didn't know I had and knew even less how badly I needed, the desperate, haunting and hurting, physical urgency to have you here, to correct whatever unthinking, brutal glitch has marred what I now know to be necessary and true: that you belong here, with me; that after only a week you have become essential to the point where spending another moment without you seems laughable and absurd.
And as we drank our wine
And let the world fade away
The sunrise tried to end it
While we tried to stay.
But another layer is new here - the cartographer's long sight, the sense that I have been here before and I know the truth of this. I know that you will be back. I know it as surely as I know the ends of my limbs and the position of my nose. It cannot be any other way. And I know that I will move heaven and earth to make it so. If I have never moved in my life, not to save myself, not to defend anything I have, I will shake my bones and lift my head and raise this lazy, useless carcass to bring you home to me. If I have any power in this world, I will make it so.
The rest of my life can't compare to this night
And only heartaches have given me sight.
They bring me to you.
The mental images blur - already it's hard for me to recall one day separate from the next, to remember: which day was it we walked in the park, which day did I make quiche, which day did we watch Boondock Saints? How can I catalogue the moments that took my breath away, that stopped my heart, that made time slow down? But where my mind falters, smears lines, smudges delineations, my skin remembers with perfect fidelity. It is so hard - and so incredibly powerful, and so necessary - for me to look at you now, my love. I look at your pictures and I know how your smile looks when it bends with pleasure, or softens with tenderness. I see your head turn and my lips know what it feels like to touch that soft place at your temple, where your blood beats close to the surface and your skin warms. I see your hair and my fingers twitch, wanting to drag through it, wanting the beat of your heart to make my fingerprints ripple and warp. My flesh remembers you better than my brain does, and longer. I don't think it will ever stop needing you.
Moon pours through the ceiling tonight
Shows me we're right
For each other
I can only wish that someone had told me before all of the little things that I could not possibly have known until I had my hands on you. Why did no one tell me? Why did no one tell me that you had silver all through your hair? Why did no one mention the way your body moves when you speak, as if every part of you proclaims everything coming out of your mouth? Why did no one tell me about the way you kiss, your tenderness and care, the way you smell, the look of your eyes when you get strident, the taste of your skin? All of these things seem so profound, so vital, that someone should have noticed before now. Someone should have noticed and informed me, so that I could have taken notice, could have found you before now.
And as we lie here and let the world fade away
The sunrise tries to end it
While we try to stay.
All of the world seems remiss in this, all of the world shirking its duty in bringing news of your beauty and rarity to me. In the same moment I myself am remiss: for not knowing, for not guessing, for not keeping you. But I will. I will be worthy of you. I will give you a place to come home to, I will give you a life to call your own, a family to belong to. Because it has always been yours, even before we knew you. Because we have been looking for you, even when we didn't know your name.
It's all about the first night and the last
Some people say
But I love you so much more tonight
More than yesterday.
So I promise and demand in the same breath; I will be better and I will demand more of you. I will be truer and I will require your truth. I will be stronger and I will expect you to cripple me at times with your strength. Call this a promise, a covenant, a vow even. A bond inasmuch as I am capable of one. I ask you, and command you, and beg you, and demand you, belong to me. Consider me, think of me. With the promise that I will spend every minute considering you, thinking of you, as part of this family I have been struggling for years to make. I will give you everything of me, if you promise to forgive it all. I will surrender every hope if you share them, will confess every fear if you will comfort them. Every mote and minute of my life is yours, if you'll promise the same.
Because it's already so. Because it's already done. Because I made you a promise when time stopped around us, when I held you in my arms for the first time, and because you made me one when you looked into my eyes and didn't look away. For that, for you, for everything you are - anything you want. Now and forever. Come and get it.
Labels: Aidan, Dreams, Happy, Love, Missing You
