A Cold Morning

The lavender veins laced across your closed eyelids.

My fingerprints hardly brushed them as they danced across

before settling on your red-velvet cheek.

Your breath was slow and deep with slumber.

The bed, smaller than a twin, required our constant touch.

Your body so thin it hardly mattered but we touched all the same.

It was our fifth morning together in that bed.

My hand moved of its own accord to your chest

and felt the thump of life below, beat then beat then beat…

My eyes and hands refused to go elsewhere

And I snuggled down into your side to press my cold lips

against your warm ear and paused, waiting for you to stir…

you did not so I took my chance.

I whispered until three little words became three-thousand.

The magnitude of my triumphant, bright, clean joy,

only slightly dampened by my gut-wrenching sorrow.

You see, I already knew you would leave.

I felt it brewing like a storm over our small town.

The one thing I didn’t know was when and

I couldn’t have guessed it would be so soon.

Couldn’t have known this was our last night.

But I had lived every moment of the last five days

like they were our last.

Good thing too, because they were.

And that morning I held you and whispered,

“I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you…”

Until you opened your eyes and said, “Hmm?”

I tried so hard to say it again,

just once,

that you might hear me and change your mind,

and not go away, or else,

that you would take me with you when you went.

I continued chanting it in my mind,

“I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you…”

But I was afraid that saying it aloud would scare you.

Two years I had loved you and five days I had held you

but the words never pressed harder on my lips until

that morning, the morning you left.

We went about our morning and I readied myself for work.

As I dressed I tried to ignore you packing,

tried to ignore the screaming in my mind, “Tell him you love him!”

Tried to lie to myself a little longer.

I walked you to the door.

The morning air was cold and I saw your breathing.

You kissed me goodbye so gently tears rose in my eyes then

you left.

I watched you walk to your car and

knew it would be the last time I ever saw you.

I was wrong of course,

I see you everywhere I go:

in the half-glances of strange men,

in the shadows I can’t quite catch as slip by,

in novels about kings and heroes,

in my mind.

Because in my mind I am always standing in that doorway.

Always kissing you goodbye.

Always screaming the “I love you” you never heard.

Eight years on, I still wonder.

Eight years on , I still wait.

Years and lovers have come and go

but my remembrance of those whispers,

that should have been shouts,

haunt every minute of my dreams, sleeping and waking.

I know you had to leave.

You had to find yourself

had to learn how to live on your own

had to experience other places

other women

other ways of living far beyond your own.

I knew it then too.

So I didn’t tell you I loved you.

And I let you go without a fuss.

But the outline of those words

drilled themselves into my psyche and remain.

And that morning spins out behind me into infinite “What ifs?”