Please Don't Be Long

I set out to write a story, though this was not the one I intended, it's the one that has come about.

I lay quietly in the stillness of my apartment. Darkness wraps me in its cool early autumn embrace as I wait for you to stir. I find solace in the sound of your breathing as I await the breaking of day. I have always favored the small hours of the morning and you find comfort in the small hours of the night. In that way, and many others we are complete opposites. Like the sun and moon, we rise and fall in our own time. But just as the sun waits upon the moon, I will always wait upon you to start my day. How could I start a day without you in it from the first? How could anything but your name be the first to escape my lips, or my fingers touch anything but your skin? Even as the sun begins to rise, I know that you are the beginning of my day and the end.

I sit up quietly so as not to wake you and pull my knees to my chest. I wrap my arms around them and observe the outline of your form against the stark sheets. Despite the dim light, my eyes know every curve and plane of yours. You lay on your stomach with one arm curved under the pillow and your face is half hidden by the soft white fabric of it. The darkness does not shroud you from me, and it never will. Were I blinded forever, I would know you in a crowded room just by the sound of heart beating inside your chest. I would know you always.

The weight of my gaze must have brushed your mind as you wake softly. My hand reflexively reaches out to caress your shoulder and you settle back into the warm sheets. My touch always calms the shivering of your soul. No matter the fights or the transgressions we pass, you are always reassured by the touch of my skin.

I could waken you with a kiss; introduce you to the new day with love but I don’t. I know what the day holds ahead of us and I am not eager to face it. You have many miles to go today, hundreds of miles away from me and everything you know. Perhaps if I let you sleep a bit longer, you will change your mind and stay… Just for a moment longer, that’s all I need.

I could make you stay. I could beg, cry, and plead with you until you surrendered. I know that you would relent to my beseeching. It would not come from a selfish place, either. You would stay or I would agree to come with you and it would be a beautiful chapter in our story of love. It would be the event that cemented our future and assured our bond of love. But I am a sick kind of lover, and part of me wants you to go. Whether it is fear or my own special brand of self-loathing that wishes you away from my side, I cannot say. I have always been cruel to myself, always denying myself the luxury of believing in love.

I know that the distance will only comfort me for a time before you slip away from me. Gradually, the visits will stop and the late night phone calls will become shorter. You will find someone else between your sheets and while you lead me on, I will know. I will know that I have lost you for a lifetime. Some part of me anticipates that sick sort of finality with readiness. I have always believed myself to be unworthy of you. Though I have never told you that, and you have never known that in the small hours of the morning before you wake, I bask in my own inadequacy to call myself your lover. But that is always the nature of any relationship. One always loves with a deeper, greater love. I am just unaccustomed to being on this side of the equation.

It would have been kinder to have loved and left you months ago. It would have been bittersweet, but I told myself that for once, don’t leave love divine. Don’t leave such a creature on the stoop in the rain, not this time! Oh the dialogue I contended myself with for hours on end! Little did I know that the divinity of you was anything short of ephemeral. How was I to know that after six months the absence of you would leave me aching to my very bones? How was I to know that you would provoke my soul to poetry, of all things, or that I would write entire symphonies about the eternity in your gaze? I did not believe that those things existed in the world I live in; part of me still doesn’t.

I trace circles on your skin with my fingers until you rouse, gently at first, then all at once you’re awake. Your eyes find mine and I look past the color at the stars beneath. They’re dimmed with sleep, but I can see them shining like a beacon even in the vague morning. For a moment we stay like that, my fingers stroking your skin and your eyes searching mine. There is a burden in my skin that is echoed in your gaze.

“Morning.” You murmur, so soft as to be barely comprehensible. I say nothing, but stretch and press my body to your side. You roll onto your side to allow my embrace and drape your arm across my back. Suddenly your face is too much for me to look at; the weight of your knowing countenance is enough to push me to tears. But I won’t cry. Not until I put you in the cab and find my way back to my apartment to find it empty. Even now, with your bags packed and your belongings ready to remove themselves from my life… it seems hollow. I press my forehead to your bare chest, to inhale the familiar scent of you and you sense the shift in my demeanor.

“Hey now,” you say softly against my hair. “Don’t cry. This is only for a year, it’s not forever.” You’ve said it a million times, and every time I long to scream at you that it might as well be. But I can’t. I am allowing this, so I can say nothing in protest of it. I say nothing at all as we lay there, perhaps for the last time.

Tenderly, you hold me until the sun begins to peak through the windows. I can feel the regret and trepidation in the set of your arms around me. It is hollow succor, knowing that this hurts you too. This is an eventuality we were bound to face sooner or later. Unfortunately, it comes too soon. Too soon, your phone alarm rings from the night stand. You make no move to turn it off until I begin to sit up.

As you flip the alarm off, I swing my legs off the bed and stand. Breakfast. That’s what we need. I make my way to the dismal little kitchen that has so often been filled with your love and begin making the last breakfast we will eat together. From the other room, I hear the shower turn on and know you’ve risen to meet the day.

By the time you have showered, a steaming breakfast is sitting before us. We sit in dense silence as we eat. I avoid your stare and you drink in the sight of me. The tension is enough that even the sound of our chewing is awkward. I look anywhere but at you. The food tastes ashen in my mouth, though you give it muted praise. Anxiety settles into my stomach with each drink of coffee I take, and even the golden beams of light shining through the window seem sallow and pallid.

“Please?” You whisper, and I look up. I meet your eyes and hold them for a moment, waiting for you to say more. I can see in your face all the things I had convinced myself were just figments of my imagination. More than that, I see a strange hurt descending from the corners of your mouth. Have I hurt you so early in the morning? “Please, say something.”

“What is there to say?” I ask quietly, taking a shaky drink of my coffee. I thought there was nothing left to say between the two of us. We’ve spoken of every eventuality, made our peace with each conversation. What is there left unsaid?

“Anything!” There is a strain in your voice, a kind of forlorn frustration. The brittleness of your tone surprises me. “I can’t bear to leave like this. I can’t spend my last morning here without sharing a single word with you! I couldn’t live with myself if this is the last memory I have of you until you visit. I can’t get on a plane knowing that I left things like this!” Then stay. You take my hand firmly in yours and whisper my name, “For God’s sake at least look at me. I am not dying; I’m just going to California.” You shake your head, your damp hair falling in your face.  “You’d think I was going to the executioner by the look on your face.” I give a small smile to hold back the tears threatening the back of my eyes.

“I’m sorry.” Is all I can manage to say. “You’re right, absolutely. I’m just going to miss you is all.” You shake your head, and I reach up to brush your wet hair from your face. It’s a tender gesture, and it softens your intense expression.

“Miss me when I’m gone. I’m here now.” You bring my hand to your lips and brush a kiss across my knuckles. I say nothing for a moment longer and I see the vexation in the twitch of your eyebrows. You always do that when you’re slightly irritated. When I say nothing more, you stand and release my hand. You march from the room in what I think is frustration, your bare feet echoing as you stamp them down with each step. For a moment, I think you’ve given up until I hear music begin to leak from the forgotten stereo in the corner.

“Come here!” You call from the other room. I abandon what’s left of my breakfast and wander into the bedroom curiously. My bare feet make little sound against the wood floors. I recognize the song, it’s an old song buried deep on my phone’s playlist. I listen to it when I think no one is paying attention, as it’s rather melancholy.

“What are you doing?” I ask when I find you standing in the middle of the room with a smug grin on your face. You have an idea. I sigh and lean tiredly against the door frame.

“You know how in all those romcoms you pretend not to have watched, they always do that dumb thing where they dance alone in apartments after dumb fights?” You ask, a glimmer in your smile.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I say, reflexively denying my propensity to watch vapid romance movies.

“Yes you do.” You say, “Now come here. We’re going to do that dumb thing.” You hold your arms open towards me, to welcome me into them. Reluctantly, I move towards you and find your hands in mine. You pull me in and gently sway to the time of the music. It’s such a slow song, anything but swaying is nearly impossible. I rest my head on your chest, our bodies melding together in a seamless match. And I love you for knowing me the way you do.

“Is this working?” You ask, sneaking a glance down at me. I pick my head up off your chest and you smirk. Of course it’s working. You lean down and find a kiss for me, just a small thing but it’s sweet. I rest my head back against your chest and listen to your heart beating. It seems to beat in time to the music. The compassion and intimacy of the moment warms me, melting away the last icicles of regret. I am once again, in the place where I belong. No matter how far you go, I will have this, at least.

Suddenly, I’m jerked from my contemplation as a guitar rips across the sound system. It’s Green Day and the preposterous difference in volume shocks us both. We stand frozen for a moment, until we both recover from the sudden sound change. You move to turn it off and I yank you back.

“What are you doing?” I demand, a genuine smile creeping across my face. You smirk back at me knowingly. “If you think we aren’t dancing ridiculously to this song, you have never been more wrong!” I yell over the music. You chuckle, but don’t move to turn off the music. This is what our love is about.

“There’s my girl.”

Reviews

[Christoph]

I can't very well believe this has no reviews.

It's quite good, maybe very good. The whole way through it I believe in the scene, the interactions. It's beautiful, the conflict comes quietly, it's real.

The one thing that takes away from that, for me, is the vocabulary in places. It's tempting to use fancier versions of words when writing something poetic, but from a reader's perspective it tends to take them out of the moment.

Especially when you're writing something so intimate and real, using real, everyday language makes it feel that much more genuine.

Besides, you're a good enough writer that you don't need to prove anything.

I realize this was posted in 2016. I might be telling you things you already know.

I'm only finding it now. Glad I did.