Eight days before the last time I saw him was the eclipse. We watched it together, holding hands, and kissing with our fingers. The air turned cold and dark, but our eyes were ablaze with the magnificence in the sky. A heat surged between our faces in sparks and electrical love-making, raising the hair on our adjoining arms to bring us a hair's length nearer. We stood there for hours, staring into the heavens, both secretly hoping that the eclipse would return, and knowing that it wouldn't. Often I would tremble, and he would respond, and I would remind him what time of the month it was.
I covered my crevice in a water fast silk, like a swollen and tooth-aching jaw. An old pair of shorts hung from his waist, tattered and savage, and dramatically draped. The wind came in gusts that revealed his inner leg, and a wild field of spiraling sprouts that grew stray from his wiry mane. He wanted to have me, and I wanted to give myself to him at a future time. It was perfect.
The sun rose the next morning, bright and unshielded by the moon. I awoke in the bedroom with the curtains pulled closed, and felt blindly around the bunched sheets at my side. The bed space was empty, and then so was I. I dressed while missing him. The orange iris ring still stained in my vision flicked every which way as a part of everything I could see, as did my memories of him, fiery and at chase.
I dragged myself to the kitchen to find it recently lived in. A dish that he washed shined wetly by the sink, still dripping. My heart lifted from the floor swifter than it had fallen, passing through my abdomen in one sharp, and deep motion. I floated room to room, calling for my love, loving him anew, and laughing for thinking he'd gone.
But he was gone, I soon realized, having checked in every closet, and every cabinet his size. He washed all trace of himself from the dish, and abandoned me with timely precision. I went back to the kitchen wanting to die, and to be haunted by the dish that he'd licked and left to dry.
I could barely stand to look at it. I turned away to gaze weakly out of the window, and wonder what I'd done wrong. And there he was. As if some sort of magic had erased the whole morning, and brought him back to the lawn for me to find him and be right again.
I watched him, speechless with relief, as his bare-chested bronze physique darkened and glistened like a piece of Greek meat.
I needed to be with him, not trapped behind a glass where the fog of my breath presses desperately against the surface wanting to penetrate the steam of his flesh streaked on the opposite side. But I couldn't take my eyes off of him. I couldn't bear to look away and have him taken in that instant by whatever dangers to his commitment that might lurk within the lawn.
He worked tirelessly, pulling, and pushing, and chopping, and bending over. His thick swollen muscles shimmered as he flexed, bulging from his waistband like a folded loaf of bread. I hungered for his thoughts, the ones about me, but I didn't dare walk from that window and tear myself from what I could see.
The mornings that followed were equally steamy. Too good to be true, and vulnerable to doubt. My heart shooting like a star, and plummeting to the ground. A roller-coaster of passion and disbelief that tested the endurance of my soul. Never have I loved or feared so strongly with such vacillation that it took every moment onto a new journey. Once, I felt my heart could stand no more, so I demanded he leave, but then an artery tore. I begged for him back faster than he could beg not to go. When I explained myself, he gently raised his shoulders, and let them fall down loosely as if to say they could carry the weight of both our suitcases.
Yesterday, I made him promise to never leave me. He and I laid nestling on the sofa, with our limbs laced clingingly to one another's skin. The way that he held me made anything possible. His long, firm arms wound me within a fantasy where my most private of dreams became palpable. I shuddered when he touched them, and then I whispered, "Promise..." My lips teased, and I teethed at the sensitive tip of his eager earlobe. He agreed, enthusiastically returning my affection, overwhelming me with such intoxicating pleasure that I almost forgot to stop him so we could watch our shows together.
The funny thing is that I believed him. I trusted him with my life and my secrets, while all the while he was lying, and likely manipulating me. I couldn't get out of bed today. Every bit of my energy was taken whichever way he'd escaped to. I've been laying here, hallow and left to dry. Cast aside like a done-with dish, only useful for a craving's worth of time. Five minutes ago, I hit my alarm, mistaking that I was waking into a fairytale. But now that spell has been broken, and the place that I'm laying is nobody's home.
I still think of him. When I stare at the ceiling, and tear when I yawn. When I switch my position in this thread-counted coffin. I know I'll wait for him forever, though I don't know if he was ever truly mine. He saved me from my life, and left me here lifeless. I watched him through the night, but I blinked, and he vanished. But I will never leave, until the heat of his body too flees from this mattress.
