Under the Streetlamp

It was 7 p.m. and Ben stood under the street lamp, waiting for the last train home.

His hands trembled as he read the cracked, yellowed pages of the last letter he'd written Alison, ten years earlier. Pale flecks of light from the street lamp made for dim reading.

My Dear Alison,

Each night as I walk up the steps to my house and my shoes squeak on the creaky, wooden stairs, my gut tightens with guilt as I move one step closer to Marilyn. Alison, my heart breaks when we're apart, but it breaks more so when we're together. Our time together brings me to tears. I can't give you what you need.

I love you, but I love Marilyn, too. In one year, you've given me more joy than I could ever tell you. You've made me feel young and full of hope. You love me with all your heart and I love you for what you've given me. You deserve more. No one's ever loved you fully. I only hope someday you will know the comfort that being fully loved brings.

Marilyn and I have two children from twenty years of married life. Others may see Marilyn's wrinkles or her sagging body, but she is my lover and my wife. I see each wrinkle and remember how it came to be – from anger, jealousy and fights, from bitter tears and long weeks of the unbearable loneliness we'd felt until we were all made up. I was part of the misery then and I'm part of the joy now, in loving Marilyn.

Ben folded the crumpled pages of that unfinished letter and placed it inside his sport coat.

He felt sorrow remembered from ten years earlier when he and Alison had stood under this same street lamp, nestled together in each other's arms and spoke of nothing but love and happy times, until Alison said it was time to go.

He recalled her words.

"I know you want to love me more," Alison had said. "But I know you can't. You and Marilyn love in a way that only you two can understand. I wanted this to be that kind of love, but I wanted too much and now we are split apart by the pressing, painful reality that it will never be, " she added.

Not long afterwards Alison moved away. Ben heard she'd married a poet and was happy.

Ben looked at his watch. It was 7:15 and still the train had not come. As he turned to look at his reflection in a storefront window, he saw not a man full of sorrow with wrinkles on his face – but a wise man, well experienced in love – for even though there were more days than not when he longed for Alison – still – he ached even more to be with Marilyn and make the same mad, passionate love as he'd done when they'd first met so many years before.

Copyright  ©  2006, 2007, 2008 Kathryn Esplin-Oleski

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This is fiction, written in 2003 and published in Pieceworks, a literary magazine.   It has been previously posted on Gather.