I know.

As we lie here, naked and exhausted I feel your hand gently stroking my shoulder to my spine.  I have never felt so close to another person in my life and I would do anything to stay in this moment for eternity.  I turn to look at your face.  Your eyes are drowsy and half closed.  My hand rests on your chest that slowly and deeply moves up and down.  I am enjoying the sound of your shallow breaths as you are about to fall asleep.

 

My mind wanders as it usually does and like a a jolt of kharmic paranoia I am forced to say, without thinking, "Is there another woman waiting for you back home?"  The moment was so tense and so loud in its emotion that the air became palpable.  In that moment, I knew.  You didn't say anything, but I knew the answer. 

 

"Do you plan on staying with her?""  Once again, the answer was in the silence and I knew what I needed and what you needed.  I am amazed by my calmness and my lack of fought back tears.  As you look into my eyes in a way that neither of us imagined you capable of, a tear starts to fall from the corner of you eye and I say to you, "No, lets not."

 

"I don't understand you" you breath to me and I look into those eyes that for years I have wanted to get lost in and for the first time since this all began, I  knew what I needed to say to you.  For the first time I wasn't afraid to be bare, to be true, to tell you how I see things.

 

"Listen to me,"  I say while I gently run my finger down your face, "I know what you feel.  I know what you want from me.  For as long as I have known you I had this idea of us and what will become of our moments we have.  It is not much in the whole picture of the world and as far as we go, it really is minor.  But there was a moment, a brief fleeting moment where I was you and you were me.  I knew you loved me, even for just one second and that is enough.  Some love stories are not forever.  Sometimes destiny and fate, and all of the above are only brief moments in a persons life.  I love you, and like I said before, for the moment I knew you loved me, but this is a no win game that if we don't watch our step we will both be losers.  I don't want that for you and I certainly don't want that for me.  So here we are, in this moment, together for what will most likely be the last time.  Let's not ruin this by you trying to make me the other woman and me debating whether or not I should be.  Let's be kind to ourselves and respect our situation.  Let's just be.  We can just be us.  Let me enjoy this moment here with you because it is all we  will ever have." 

 

You understand me.  You agree with me.  You kiss me.  I hold back the tears that I lied to you about not having.  I feel good about us at last.  I feel freed as we lay here naked and exhausted.   I feel your hand gently stroking my shoulder to my spine.  I have never felt so close to another person in my life and I would do anything to stay in this moment for eternity.  I turn to look at your face.  Your eyes are drowsy and half closed.  My hand rests on your chest that slowly and deeply moves up and down.  I am enjoying the sound of your shallow breaths as you are about to fall asleep.