breaking all the rules

Well, Lisa just left. I took Sharon’s advice and decided to just ask about who she’s been seeing. Took lots of guts because I feared the answer; I know she's dating someone else but my heart needs to know. It feels to good inside to be just a fling.

It's been so long since someone moved me like she has. The more I think of it; perhaps it's only happened in dreams, in idle thoughts that to me were nothing but a fantasy. Something I clawed at to retain as I woke, something to remember; a faceless woman who with the simple touch of her fingertips sent sparks across my skin, eyes piercing into me where I cannot hide, don't wish to hide. But now this woman has a face and is rocking my world. Never expected to feel these feelings.

The first night we talked at length about nothing and everything I felt this warmth grow inside of me. It was everywhere at once... from the tips of my toes to my scalp, my heart fluttering; and we kissed after I asked for one. That kiss floored me, it was like every kiss I had ever wanted in my life, every lover that I have ever had disappeared, forgotten. There was nothing to compare it to except again in dreams, in hoping that someday I'd be blessed somehow with just the experience of such a thing. All this flew through my mind as our lips touched, rolled into one moment as they met and lingered.

I rode home high as a kite. I don't even truly remember the ride, except that I could still taste the kiss even while wind and air sliced around me; as I pulled up to my house somehow the key opened the door, somehow I shed my clothes, somehow I fell into my bed wondering if anything I had just experienced was truly real. When I woke I had no token of our experience except a burning memory of a kiss, and as my mind started to clear from dreams it actually took a few minutes for me to wonder if it was just that, something I dreamed of.

I had to go away for work, fly over and away from the land we live in. As I settled in and gazed outside the window as I traveled above the clouds I realized that somehow I was instinctively looking back, trying to whenever the plane turned, wondering if the miles that were growing between us would make what I felt somehow diminish.

It didn't.

After I came back I cleared everything off of my plate to dedicate all of myself to finding out if she were real or something I was simply picturing... as we talked more, as we fell into each other's eyes and smiled and shared I knew that I was right with what I was thinking. I started getting scared; here I was feeling like a kid. I was shy. I was hyper-aware of myself.

Last night we had lots of fun. We went out riding, jammed to music while playing old coin-op games of our youth... revisited our pasts, drank ourselves with emotions running in our veins until we were drunk from each other. We knew something was happening as the morning crept, the sky opened up and I had to run outside; she ran out with me to help without me asking and we danced for a while in the rain. Soaking wet, her long hair matted down, water covering our faces as we kissed and laughed, too wet to care any more, as the lightning competed with the flash in our eyes, the claps of thunder not even noticed. For all I know it could've been my heart that was shaking the ground beneath our feet.

We came in and scared the cat, dried off, changed clothes, huddled together to keep warm. Then she opened up and told me: that she was torn.

I know that feeling, have known it before. God above knows that I've felt that. I wanted to convince her, tell her what I've done and what I've learned: I've made mistakes, but with the final closing of my eyes there will be no regrets for what I've done, what choices I've made. But how can I convince her of that which only experience can bring without seeming biased?

When I made my wish on the night's first star after our first date I asked for something, yet afterwards somewhere I knew there would be irony in that what I have done before will come full circle and happen to me… I’ll fall in love to the core of my soul, and one day it’ll just be gone.

It feels too right, too easy to have occurred to find someone like her without a trade of some sorts. As with anything payment is always now, will always be now. So I live with a bite of fear, my pride swallowed. Every moment of my life that helped build walls around are simply, well, no longer are there.

I am a child once again, standing mute in awe of true beauty.

Someone so wonderful that everyone knows they must exist somewhere... but I've been blessed with having touched that person, having held that person. Having that person wake up beside me.

She asked if I could be hurt by her, and for what I thought would be impossible... yes I could be hurt by no one but her. Someone who I really hardly know yet, someone who I desire to know more of, about. My friends will always keep an eye on my heart in case I lose it or it becomes shattered, but I'm the one that picks a ride where seatbelts are pointless, where risk is a part of life. What I'd risk for her... what I'd give up to be the one she rests her head on at the end of a weary day, or simply at night during dreams.

If Lisa hurt me by disappearing from my life, then experiencing her is something that I will never regret; I will be sad knowing, having tasted something as sweet as her, that she won't be mine to gaze upon in the morning as her eyes open bright and shiny, awake with passion and kindness... long hair flowing over the bed like a halo of sorts. She provides a perfect picture in which artists would give their sight for if it was the last thing they ever saw.

I feel as though she can show me life as it was meant to be experienced with love and tenderness, and it's so difficult for me to not be selfish, for me to wish for something for myself. This manner of thought is foreign to me. As long as the other is happy my sacrifices meant naught, but now I crave, I desire to be within and beside her, to always hold each other as we do when she rests her head on my chest as we drift into sleep, our bodies intertwined in ways that never get uncomfortable.

To see a world reflected in her eyes... instead of what I normally see through mine.

I don't know what will be done when she makes her choice, I can just Hope. For the first time that I can remember, I am powerless to do anything else. I'll try to tell her; try to express what she means to me, how special she is, how beautiful a person she is; no matter how many attempts to deny it. But in the end it's going to be just Hope that she'll return and not just leave.

Hope at the most highest form of the word.

Hope that she will have chosen me.