Just out of reach

Awakened with my senses filled by the sweet scent of her skin, I reach out across sixteen years and sixteen inches to brush a wanton wisp of soft red hair away from her beautiful dumbo ears. She pretends she is still sleeping, pretends she does not notice and I pretend I mean nothing by it, pretend I am not stealing intimacies with her, stealing intimacies from the man she loves instead of me.

I have spent this restless night in painful bliss listening to the gentle music of her snore, lying close to the warmth of her, awash in the wonder of her, wishing I could be the one to unlock the mystery of her and take on the weight of the hurt she cannot share but bears in silence like a punishing stone.

In the resounding silence of our repose I lie stricken, knowing that when she begins to move, she will be moving away from me, and that I will let her, and that I will hate it. the beat down and broken motor that was once my heart thumps along in time to that ancient fourth grade mantra - she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not - and wretched fear settles over me like an ex lover, whispering sweet nothings to me; you are too old, too fat, too this and too that and she does not want you, and never will.

And she gets all my jokes, and she finishes my thoughts, and she sometimes looks at me like I am the only man in the world, and isn't that how it's supposed to be? And when she smiles at me it warms me like the sun upon my skin, and when she touches me I burn bright like a forge ready for the crucible, and I can hear the music of the spheres in her voice, in her laugh, in my heart and isn't that how it's supposed to be?

and when that terrible, wonderful perfect moment breaks, she yawns and stretches and looks at me with exquisitely blue eyes and says Good morning Patrick, and the then she is moving away from me, and I am left to ponder the Irony of it all, and curse god for my lot in life. She goes to put on a pretty dress and still I cannot confess for fear of all the hurt it could cause us both.

So I will just keep on keeping on, pulling her hair and making fun, basking in her presence when she is near and living in the hell of my own making when she is not. In another universe she says, we are already married and will live happily ever after but that is no comfort in the here and the now.

Soon the time comes for us to say goodbye, and she hugs me so close, so close and in the perfect pleasure and pain of this moment I feel as if I will shatter like the proverbial wine glass, but this too shall pass.

I will see you soon I promise.

You will come and rescue me? she asks.

But she knows that I will, that I must, that I am drawn to her like a moth to the flame just as I know that someday I will burn in that awful light. But perhaps this way i might find at last worthy end. then let them write upon my tombstone here lies Patrick, who stopped loving her on the date carved above.