But tonight, it's different. The space between us, the emptiness, is tangible, and the silences between us are filled with
uncomfortable pauses rather than a a shared sense of joy. To borrow a cliche, the minutes crawl by like days, and it seems
as though we've been here for years, fumbling with each other in the darkness.
Our usual ease together has vanished—there is something between us now, something dark that lurks at the edge of
recognition—and each touch is awkward, strange, and frighteningly unfamiliar. Time stretches out, draws itself into the
vanishing heat of our dissipating closeness, the hours slipping between the gaps of our contact. We are in a place where
the feeling of skin-on-skin, once a haven almost drug-like in its intensity, has become the awkward chill of trespass, an
incomprehensible invasion.
I am aware of the desolation between us—the growing absence of feelin—and there is a part of me that wants to shove you
away as fast and as hard as I can, to widen the gap and lessen the pain of loss.
And yet... what we've shared, the memory of warmth transforms what could have been merely a growing vacancy into a
poignant and knife-sharp reminder of what was. Each moment we spend together, as painful as it may be, as empty and
meaningless as it is, still remains precious because it had a chance at becoming something more.
The chill I feel when your hands brush my skin in the darkness merely drives home the value of what I am losing, of what
is slipping away as if it had never been.
We meet there, in the cold emptiness of passions remembered, and your hands on me are cold, as is your flesh under my
finger-tips. Together, we are automatic, a custom grown old, useless, meaningless, and the name on your lips is mine, but
the image in your mind is not.
We finish, shudderingly, achingly, but you do not lie next to me as you used to do. The contented, mutual wonder of after
is gone, and even the bitter joy of our hollow, physical passion has vanished. You dress, jerkily, as if you would hide from
my eyes. Perhaps you would. You pull on your jacket, the black leather no longer so incongruous to your face and body
as it was when you arrived, with motions that seem awkward, almost ashamed. As you moved towards the door, you
glance back at me—and I wonder who you see, what I look like to you now. And then, with a fumbling, graceless smile,
you toss a sentence at me.
"I'll...see you tommorrow, then." But your words bear the hollow ring of goodbyes, and you know, and I do too, that you
won't.
Goodbyes
by Broken Angel
Every other night we spent together seemed to rush by on silver wings, and the hours we spent in each others' arms
vanished with minute-like swiftness. Bars of sunlight seemed to fly, rather than slide, across the floor, and every second
was a precious gem that moved out of reach far too quickly.
