Original Story - I hope to make you feel, something. Anything.
Having a bad dream? Hold me tighter, breathe deeply into the rhythm we’ve created.
Feeling uncentered, off balance? Come back to Earth in the the valleys and hills of my skin.
You are like a flower unfurling in the dawning of my love. The first light of morning touches your still sleeping body. Your eyes slowly open, and you smile, and murmur sleepily, ‘I love you like the land loves the rain.’
I kiss your head, softly and slowly, and whisper ‘Go back to sleep. For I am the moth and you are the flame. You need rest, and I the same.’ She sleeps, and I follow.
I wake, and see her shadow against the window. Her head leans on the frosted glass as she looks out to the world beneath her.
I pad on soft feet to her side, furling her neatly into my arms, wrapping her, the protective leaf to her delicate petals.
You sigh into my chest. ‘We should get dressed.’
‘Yes.’ I hold her tight, and let her go. What I really want to say is ‘We should stay here forever.’
But we have an appointment.
The morning is grey, the sky an iron weight. Snow dusts the ground. The train is quiet as it rattles through the morning light. Our hands intertwine, back and forth, soft trailing fingertips lacing us together. I lean into your neck to plant a kiss, and inhale your smell. Rosewater and the vanilla pureness of your flesh draw me back in time to a summer day we shared.
Your mother had needed a rose bush pruned. You wanted to make rosewater. We made gallons of the stuff and you’ve worn it everyday since. You daub it on your skin. It intoxicates me. But now there is a metallic undercurrent to your smell.
I wrestled the snarled vines as you daintily snipped the pinkish buds into a bin. There were flowers old and full, fragrant in their lush openness, and younger, modest buds, furled tightly, awaiting another dawn to open and spill their sweet breath to the air. You were something in between. I saw you, from the corner of my eye, bold and brave and in charge, when you thought I wasn’t looking. Your petals were raw and scarlett. When I looked at you, beaming at your brilliant beauty, you would blush, pink and perfect and concealed, modest and shut tight, still scared and shy of the power that we were just beginning to realize that we held over each other.
You didn’t want to be hurt. Neither did I. But now, this hurts more than either of us could have known.
The train lets us out. You pull me out, lead me across the street and into the hospital. You don’t look back. You never have.
The doctor looks you in the eye and tells you that the cancer isn’t going into remission. He tells you that his treatments aren’t working, all the drugs that have made you so sick and the radiation that ate your beautiful hair aren’t working. He tells you, quietly, to make your arrangements. It will not be much longer now.
You are silent, and your silence speaks a pouring of your grief into my cupped hands. I try to hold it, but it slips by like water, to pool in the cavities of our hearts. Before, there would have been no room, because those cavities were filled by the wholeness of each other, but you have been drawing away, leaving us both empty inside.
‘I want to go home now.’ You say from underneath tears. I have not let go of your hand and I lead you away from this horrible place. The doctor says wait, you should stay in the hospital. We do not listen. His answers are hollow now.
We go home. We draw a hot bath, so hot your bruised flesh can barely handle it. And we weep. For each other. For the animal of cancer, that lurks under stairways, whose slimy golden eyes shine from dark places at the corners of vision.
You are gone now. We held each other in those final nights with an intensity that tried in vain to burn away the waiting night. I became the flame, and you the moth, and as much as I tried to feed you with the burning fire of my love, to water you with the rains of my tears, it was not enough. But we were happy. We knew that all love has an end.
We live, because we know that each moment could be the last. We love, because all of life will one day be the past.