Of Love and Memories
Truly, has your heart felt a love like this?
I wish there were more moments to recall, the ones that show us naked and afraid. Instead, I recall our time together as projections of idealized portraits, retouched and photo-shopped by minds unable to bear the sharp edges and blunt-force trauma that lovers stumble through along the boulder-strewn road of romance. I don’t want to recall only the good moments but the ungood moments too, but maybe it’s better that I only recall the good and let the ungood rest like closed wounds. If I remembered the ungood I might cry at the unpleasantness and the hurt and the anger and the fear. I recall your smile without effort while your frown I don’t recall at all.
In my dreams, I miss the potholes of anger that threatened to break me at the knees, and the curves that made my mind whirl at the change of gears within your mind. In my dreams, I miss the times I went away and you were alone, because friends can’t replace the absence of the other anymore than a transplanted heart can replace the one it replaced. In my dreams, I miss the moment your body nestled into my arms like a living, breathing, loving being composed of all the heartbeats that ever beat in time with another’s beating heart.
In my dreams, you are perpetually you, while I am not the same as the one I was when I was with you. You are forever the age you were when I was with you while I have aged, am become weather-beaten, and wrinkled, and worn. In my dreams, your skin is still the same white that reflects all the rays of the sun, your lips still the same red as that sought by the ruby, your eyes forever the same green that penetrated the deepest part of me, and your hair the deepest black that holds the light at bay.
The first time you touched me the sun dimmed and flickered and I felt like I had hyperventilated.
When I touched your lips for the first time I barely held back the tears, but my heart still cried at the power of emotion that passed between us; and when I opened my eyes the sun was bright again, but I trembled upon shaking legs. Even then, as your hands held me around my waist, the shaking was more like the purring of a cat lying on a lap in perfect trust and satisfaction and happiness and warmth and comfort.
If it were permitted, I would hold my lips to yours in a barely-touching movement and breathe your breath into me and send you my breath to breathe into you. If it were permitted, I would step into your body so I could never be apart from you because I crave feeling all of your body all at once. If it were permitted, I would take all my nourishment from my gaze into your eyes and the sight of you would be the bread and water, the fruit and vegetable, the meat, the wine, the dessert, the sustenance to my soul.
In my dreams, it is always the first time, the first time I saw you, the first time I saw you look at me, the first time we touched, the first time we kissed, the first time you said no, the first time you said yes, the first time we made love, the first time we lay side by side, the first time I washed you, the first time I washed your hair, the first time I rubbed you with the towel.
All those times are the first and last because I will always remember them and they will never die until they die with me. And then we will be gone together; and when we are gone together who will remember us? A thousand years hence when we rise from the dead, will you remember me?
