Love Begins

There's so much to say; yet, so little we've said. 

We do not talk, you and I. There's that hush, the chill that surrounds the air we breathe. It used to be different, so very long ago.

I could say I hate you, but that isn't true. I love what we once had.

Remember when I wrote these words?

A savage poetry
Tendresse
Metamorphosis

I was convinced then that what we had was real. It was real. It is real. That much I know.

There were the nights of convoluted bodies and spaces explored - the emptiness we filled,  the long kisses,  tongues thrust into each other, soul sucking breath from each other's soul.
 
Now this love seems old.  The touch, shiver, caress and full-body embrace no longer makes me quiver, moisten or yearn; I'm dead to my feelings for you. For you, too, that is true.

When like lovers three years aago we touched, sneaking away to your office, the kiss seemed like first-time; I knew then we'd never die, that we'd stay locked within each other's hearts.

Those moments now are like letters never opened,  with the sealing wax never opened, yet crusted over, almost broken. It is a fragile love, ours. 

At one time, when our love began, we thought we'd invented love - it was lust that was more than lust - I could feel your breath upon my neck as you grazed my body with your member and I sunk into pleasure.  We never could avoid each other, so much trouble we found ourselves in;  we always yearned for more.

I'd searched for someone like you;  the poet in me seeks an avenue that few can fill;  I'd found it, I thought, in you.

Truly,  I'd found myself. I had not found you, but myself.

You, too, have found yourself, and neither the twain shall meet.

Do you remember when we asked: what happens after we make love more than 1,000 nights? Will it all disappear in a vapor of taste-memories?

Did it all disappear in a vapor of taste-memories? Or, did the anger kill everything.

We know each other too well, now; how many years we explored the crevices, sucked the juices from each other's souls so that there were no new spaces, crevices, tastes left to explore.

I wonder about that.

I think it was the reality we finally awoke to that sunk our love. 

Day-to-day finances, the reality of childrearing; your world and how you were raised versus my world and how I was raised.

Do you remember this postcard I mailed to you, early in our love?

Meet me
Friday, 7 p.m.
Dark corner
Garter is yours
Your lap kitten

You were beside yourself, and foamed at the mouth.

I knew then I had you; but power does not speak of love; love does not speak of power.

As we round the corner into another year, we wonder where our love went.

It went to our differences, the problems we knew one day would cast evening shadows longer than our lust.

*   *   *    

This is in the fictional series on marriage and family.

Previously:

First: Love Begins

Second: The summer I found the rabbit in the road

Third: Just when I need you all so damn much

Fourth: The refrigerator hums along in middle C

Fifth: Film at 11

Sixth:Now it all begins to make sense, at the 11th hour

Seventh:  When spring fails to come and the sun sets forever 

These were originally on Gather last year under a different title; they have been rewritten since that time.

Copyright © 2007 Kathryn Esplin-Oleski