A Season of Winter

I used to dream of the day he'd say he loved me. It'd be sincere, like rain plummeting onto dry soil. It'd be soft, like a hymn sung between chapel walls. Intentional, like poetry. Intricate, like the pulse that beats for him. But my fortitude crumbled beneath silence. There was never intention, only substance, but nothing substantial.  Two years and countless faces later, I can still recall the night I held him last. He was in my arms but absent all the same. His flight was at six-thirty that morning; there would be two thousand miles between us for three months. I resented the distance while he lay indifferent. It was as if my world was drifting away from me, into some faraway orbit. I'm sure there's a term for that—one he would know. He'd studied astronomy and was acquainted with space.  As I drove him to the airport, I felt on his behalf. When I parked, his hand twined with my own, I watched—no, I felt him withdraw from me. Maybe the moment was too real for ...

I am always the first to love. Maybe I'm trusting.  Maybe I'm optimistic.  Or maybe I've made synonyms of these words, synonyms for desperation. Oftentimes I wonder,  did I ever love him or did I love his potential? I am, after all, a writer. Plot-lines are my specialty and narratives might as well be my type. In some fucked-up, literary sense, the worst men always make the best stories.  I am never the first to leave. When I love, I love with everything. Everything I have and everything I don't . I condition myself to think him worth it because, as I previously mentioned, I love the potential. Only now I recognize that it was never his  potential, but the potential for me to feel something—to be known by somebody. To cry an array of tears in demonstration. To feel my heart splinter like a wishbone never wished upon. To think you the sky and me a beggar—to see you that way—with eyes like a typhoon, crying for you.  This  is what it means to  ...