Thirteen Years

The flame burned so much brighter, hotter, in those early, fresh, uncertain days, when love was an infection, a fever, a state of delirium that ruined your calm collected existence. With such intensity comes ultimately the burnout, leaving you spent, lost, crushed and damaged. You survive, lick your wounds, and seek it out once again, all the while in denial you could ever expose yourself to such delicious pain again. But you are human, and the choice has and never will be yours.

Then, she touches you, the one, and instead of thunder and lightening and the great destroyer come to claim your heart once again..........you simply accept the gentle grasp and never, ever, can you let go. You'll love her, need her, from first hot and heavy and often rut, to sharing a couch knowing only the nearness you've come to need, for that is ALL you need. She'll wonder to where you've gone, when detachment takes you to your safe place, but she'll welcome you back when safe seems so empty, for there is never an empty place in her arms. She will question ever having known you, and somehow you'll remind her, and her smile welcomes back reasons that slip away sometimes.

You smolder now, allowing for flare-ups to surprise and belt you about the head and heart, and there is no bad habit, ill-chosen word, repeated innocent insult, or monumental tantrum which can break your need of her. And she'll suffer you, and suffer you, and love you. This is a creature, two hearts beating in one chest, two minds thinking the same thought, one entity swallowing up two souls, blending them into a most unlikely chimera. The only cure is death; till then it knows loyalty only to it's whole, the parts long since dead.

She glances over at me and I know the question in there...."Does he still love me, want me; how could he still?" When she's not looking I glance back, my answer so pathetic, "How could I not? I do it so poorly, I know, but I do it still. It's all I know,"



Thirteen years. It smolders still.