Tom

You and I are lying on the bed.

I stare at the ceiling, at the shadows created from the motel curtains and the hot autumn sun beating against the window. The television has been off for some time, now. It’s quiet and dim and in the distance, I can hear the highway. Our things are packed, and we are an hour or so away from leaving.

I know a few things, like you love me, and I no longer love you. I know that when we leave here, I won’t see you again, but when we kiss goodbye near our cars, when you hold me, it will feel like it always felt, like it felt before you slept with that woman who shares my name, and when your voice gets choked as you talk into my hair, I will promise to write . . . I will promise to call. I will promise to keep things going as long as we can, and I will mean those things.

I will mean them, because when your arms are around me, I will, for a moment, forget that they were around her. And the love that we shared will be enough for me. I will close my eyes, and I will inhale that soapy-clean smell that hangs on the collar of your shirt and the warm skin of your neck, and I will feel the softness of your hair that curls there, and I will feel how much I will miss you. Until you let me go, and you pull back to kiss me again, and I look at your eyes. And then, I will remember. And when you kiss me, it will feel the same, but different, and it will taste bitter, and I will realize I have lied, and I won’t care.

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Chris

You and I are lying on the bed.

You ask me if you can smoke. I love you so much, I don’t care that it makes my room stink, that it gets in my hair, that it makes me sneeze. I say yes, and you ask, are you sure? I answer, yes, I’m sure, just crack the window. You rise, walk to the window, and open it. When you return and sit, you pull a pillow into your lap and have me rest my head on the pillow. You stroke my long, dark hair and lean over, lighting the cigarette and ensuring that the ashes don’t fall on me as you continue to stroke my hair, trace the dark arches of my eyebrows and the curve of my lips as I smile.

I am content, and I drowse there, with you, knowing that soon, this will end, it will all end, and you will be gone, and I won’t able to live without you when you go, but I can’t think about that now . . . I can only think about this moment, with you, your fingers light on the lines of my face, and the smell of your cigarettes polluting my room. I know I will remember this: the pillow, your lap, your pianist’s fingertips on the softness of my mouth, kissing you as you touch me, as you play across my face with one hand and smoke, languidly, with the other . . .

I love you more than I have ever loved anyone, more than I believed I could ever love. When you are inside me, I actually long for you to taste me, to eat me, to take me inside of you, to somehow find a way to blend us together and blur our edges, to lose what makes us each other so we can finally and completely become one, entirely new being. This frightens you, sometimes, but more, my light attracts you like a moth. You long to be burned by me, to singe your wings in my searing passion and fall to your death. We will murder each other, keeping up like this, and we know it, but we can’t resist it.

We don’t say it, in the silence. This is what we do: we couple, madly, in the dark . . . after spending endless hours with one another, talking, our minds dancing long before our bodies . . . we fall into a mad tangle of limbs and tongues and breath . . . then we sit and say nothing . . . each lost in our own contemplation of the impending end. You smoke, gently tracing my face like one would explore a sculpture . . . and I purr softly, never wanting the moment to end and knowing that too soon, it will, and when it does, it will scar us both forever.

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Drew

You and I are lying on the bed.

You marvel at the milky whiteness of my skin, and when I remind you that I have a tattoo on my ankle, you reach down, your hand finding my foot. You look at it for the longest time — a crescent moon and star — and then you smile at me as if discovering a precious treasure. When you lift my ankle to your lips and kiss it, love blooms within me sharply, like a rosebush.

When you are so deep inside of me that it leaves me breathless and beyond words, lost in a realm of pure sensation, there is a moment when you whisper something in my ear that I can’t believe I hear, and yet, I know exactly what you said . . . and over the years, it will haunt me . . . I will remember.

I will never forget.

Afterward, after an act so unprecedented in so many ways, I have never revealed the details to anyone . . . it was so personal, so private . . . we do something I never do with anyone — we actually curl up together, your hand wrapped so tightly in mine that my fingers leave marks on yours — and we sleep. When we wake, you shake your hand out to return circulation.

That day in my room, together, we have no way of really knowing that the love we share is so catalytic, it will soon raze lives. It has a single mindedness that will soon destroy things, cutting a vicious swath across the world, hell-bent on its own merry course and impossible to dissuade or derail. We are all along for the ride. At some point, there will be no disembarking. At other points, there will be no comfort in prayer or confession. At other points, even amputating and cauterizing the evidence, proof, or memories will be no consolation.

The only way out is through.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes Benz
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

~ The Eagles, “Hotel California”

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Credit: Brandy @ Bemused Musings from Baltimore

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