Downtime

I sold myself to a multitude of pain for a moment of bliss.

Should I be worried? Because it is in your arms that I’ve found a somewhere I’d like to rest, at the end and beginning of every day. And I meant it, when I whispered softly, “This isn’t good. I think I’m getting used to you”. At the same time, clutching myself tightly to your chest and feeling a wave of sobering fear ripple through my consciousness. Morning would come, and with it the desperate wish that it could always be like this.

So I grasped fervently at every minute, hung on your every word, lingered in every tender gaze, suspended in every circle your dancing fingers swirled and swished over my back, breathed in the intensity of every kiss; but waiting on tenterhooks for your hand to pull out of my clasp, or your body to recoil from mine.

But you didn’t. You came back for more.

Perhaps that’s what I needed to know. Maybe, all that I needed to know, for now. That Sydney wasn’t just a one night stand, a cruel trial, an un-redeemable mistake. That you could perhaps, on some level, find me desirable. It would be a sign, that there was something keeping you here – a residue of feeling somewhere in there that never went away, an ounce of courage to take a stab at the future, a sliver of hope that you might step up, a hint of some repressed love you never dared to attest to.

Things have changed. “This is good. Lots of talk, lots of sex,” you murmured into my earlobe in jest. So I can’t help but notice the subtle shifts in our strange relationship, both said and unsaid. You no longer shudder away from me when my fingers brush against yours, or when our skin touches when I lean ever so slightly against you on the bus. We’re now able to engage in the cheeky banter and playful flirtation I’ve often found myself all too often envying, as I watched but was never able to participate.

And there’s no reason why things shouldn’t have taken the slightest of turnarounds. I’ve as good as given myself to you. After all, I’ve felt you, and you’ve felt me.

And now that I know… I feel like I can taste what it means to be loved. And if this is but a mere foretaste, what people might deem a cheap imitiation, a pariah breed of its real form… I suppose I can only begin to imagine the fulness of love in all glory, the day it arrives.

Even if life inevitably drives us down divergent paths. If a day should come when I no longer have the strength to hold on. If you should ever forget what we shared in these 8 days. If you could ever find it in you to leave me for good. If my heart should ever find another -

It was worth it.

There are a million reasons why this was wrong, and why it wouldn’t and could never work out. And yet, all I can think about, is when I’ll see you again, or when I might next wake to your sleepy smile.