Your Eyes

For two days I've been trying to decide what you mean to me. It's hardly an easy question considering it's only been two weeks since you swaggered into my life. I can admit I knew right away we would be friends. There was too much history between us for there not to be a complete and instant connection. What a paradox we are, complete strangers but I have been living a near echo of your life. We've been to many the same places, done the same things. And yet, we are so different.

Your intelligence, control and reserve undo me. I'd rather see you fidget and pace nervously than to be alone with you at your most self assured.

You make me feel inadequate. No, scratch that. I make me feel inadequate. You're just being you.

It took me a week, no, I'll admit, it took me the full two weeks to stop feeling lessened by you. I imagined your eyes were closed during sex, perhaps picturing her instead of me and your emotions were so controlled as to almost seem like detachment.

It wasn't until last night that I realized your eyes had never been closed, that you watched me, steadily, from under your heavy lidded gaze.

Your eyes are the color of hunger; lean and cold like a starving predator and you watch me with cold calculation. Then again, it's the strange sickening reversal of feeling you get when you thrust your hands under scalding hot water and it feels cold and gives you chills even as it burns the flesh from your bones.

Your eyes are a live wire; the silver, hot/cold steel of lightning, like the lightning that flickered across your pale lids that night as you pushed into me. I whimpered for you like a dog afraid of the storm and you left me, shaking, curled around your hips for comfort because I knew this, like the storm, would be fleeting.

And when you left last night, our last night, you put Orpheus to shame, leaving me with only the impression of your straight spine as it faded into the pre-dawn gloom. But I never felt the quickening of regret, loss, or suffering. That I would save for another day.

Last night you gave me what none of the others had had the strength or the courage to give me. You gave me the gift of closure. You trusted me not to fall apart at the reality you were most likely never coming back. You and I ate companionably, talked, laughed until my ribs ached, loved passionately, quietly, and slowly.

I took your face in my hands, my index finger pressed into the dimple in your cheek, the scratch of new beard growth on my palms and I kissed you firmly, feeling the push of teeth behind full lips.
And the kiss said "I love you".
And the kiss said "thank you".
And the kiss said "I don't regret a minute we've had together".
And the kiss said "goodbye".

It's important to me that you know I didn't cry as you left. Or later. It's important to me that you know you've given me such a gift of strength and self assurance.

And now, as I write this, I realize the kiss didn't mean "goodbye" after all, because you've given me a part of yourself to keep with me. I'll never be able to tap that inner strength without invoking your memory.

As you and I came that last time, together, I begged you to say my name. You hesitated and when you spoke it, your mouth stumbled and paused over the foreign syllables. I realized you'd never spoken it out loud before and I cherished that newborn awkward moment as the first and last time you'd ever hold my name on your tongue.

It was crystalline. It was clear and as light shone through it, it cast rainbows on the walls.