She Was.

There is an almost unbearable sweetness in holding hands, bare legs entwined, in the afterwards, in the decision that this is not right for either of us. This is the first time, really, that I’ve allowed myself to be open to relationships, short-lived, burning. To knowing and being for just moments. It is right and not at all not. I’ve always looked towards permanence and not the transient and now, I find myself in the inbetween, in the yes, please, for this night, these nights, these few weeks. And it is lovely and less lonesome. There is comfort in friendships forged in bed, in hearing the whispered words another women has taught him, in uttering those things about myself that I am scared may be truths. Things I would not say to someone that was anything but my liquid friend. It is almost unbearably sad to lay in too young arms, to fall easily into past loves. Is this all I will ever do? To tell stories to wide open dark eyes. To speak of shared languages and the missing always the missing. And to feel the too close past and the too distant. Lovers bring me back and they bring me forward. The hurt makes me better.

. . .

In being soft I think of you. It isn’t your hands that held me last night, the night before that, this week, this month. And you, you knew me better than anyone in this here and now, in the current. And now you don’t and that makes me sad. I wanted you to know me best. I have new friends, people you don’t know. I hold their secrets and you see them but you don’t know. They hold mine and you don’t know. I trust and laugh and love and share and drink and dance and I am happy. For the most part. Until your cold blue eyes rest on mine and you steal touches that are not yours to take. You wrap your hand around my thigh in that way of yours and you speak to me and the bass beat pauses but you don’t know and I will not tell you more than this: you are hurting me. Something was open when I met you. It’s clicked shut with only you inside and no one else can get near that place. Even when I want them to. So let’s just say whatever we like, we’ll be angry, fuck up, lose, fight, win, give in, withdraw. You can ignore me, touch me, love me, want me, yell at me, watch me softly, watch me hard, crash and fall with me or without me, hurt us both. I will be there. I will be here. I will let you hurt me and I will let you love me and when you’re done saying those things that hurt me, when you’re done being everything I don’t want you to be, everything that I hope you are not, when I am crying and I don’t see that my hands are bleeding, again, and we are crying together and apart and you are finished with your hurting and I am finished with mine, then when we’re done smashing our hearts against each other, for me, for you, for her, for him, then when I am only me and you are only you, then baby, then you can touch me better. We can feel each other better. We’ll make each other well.