Do you remember the moment that you saw him? The exact moment, when he burst through the restaurant door, sweat beading off his hair and brow, dark stain already expanding across the front of his gray button-down, and in an instant you knew you would give him your heart? You can still see it - the gold of his hair like sunlight shimmering on ocean waves, the pale bristle of a day's growth on his chin, and his eyes the green of forest shadows. Do you remember the way he gazed at you that night, as though losing himself in the labyrinth of your eyes, while you yourself traced the capering candlelight that danced its way across the surface of his own. There was a slow ache beneath your sternum that crested and crescendoed all through the evening, his words the lucent pull of a full moon crossing the starless night, and cold flames seared your skin when his fingers brushed across yours. It was only with reluctance that you took your hand away from his when it came time to leave him at his doorstep, but his promise that you would see each other again rang like a bell in the crystalline air.
Many nights later, when your bodies entwined after your first fevered lovemaking, sweat coating your skin in a sheath, and he pulled your arms around him while still half-asleep, the overwhelming clarity that might have been happiness bloomed in your chest.
And like a flower, too, was the way that it withered and died.
Oh, how it hurt, that day in the rain. His eyes were a sea green then, restless and churning, but looking everywhere except at you. His fingers tangled into knots on his lap, then unwound and dragged themselves down his pants, seeking to smooth out creases that weren't there, before the process repeated itself. And his words, so quiet and so thunderous at the same time, artillery fire blasting at the foundations of your very being, leaving shattered walls and smoking craters where once you had built a mansion for him upon the hillock of your heart. The months, years, of tending a furtive hope that perhaps the two of you would one day hold each other's wrinkled hands undone in but a few short minutes. He never turned to look at you as he walked away, and though it was all you could do not to run after him, you too turned your back as your feet tried to carry you home again.
And now here we are. Alone in the dark, the pain and loss so treacherous you don't know how to navigate through without dashing yourself on their jagged shoals. The emptiness is a worm that gnaws at your guts, twisting and turning and burrowing ever deeper, hollowing you out from within. It takes away everything - the taste of butter and the golden warmth of the sun, the tenderness of a cool breeze over your skin and the delight of discovering a new path home. It leaves ash-choked fields and flat barrens that burn beneath a sky the color of charcoal, but of course it leaves the pain and the longing untouched. And hope. Hope that the words that can fix this will resolve themselves from the clouds of nebulous possibility. Hope that the phone will ring, and the soft voice on the other end will let you know that he is downstairs, that he is sorry he hurt you, that he has made a mistake. That all he wants and ever wanted is you. The hope drives the barbs further and further under your skin, until all you can think about is how to make it stop.
This, I can do for you.
I can smooth the furrows in your heart and lead you through the precarious reefs. I can unhook the barbs and the nails and the razors that have wormed so deeply into your flesh. I can make the ashen fields of your soul bloom again, and let you taste the warmth of sunlight, the sweetness of a fresh apple, the caress of a gentle wind. I can make you whole.
There is a cost, of course, but nothing in this world will give you what you want and ask so little in return.
Simply take my hand and wish it, and all the pain will go away.
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Mostly an exercise in description, this one.
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