I Don’t Want ‘Forever’

I don’t want forever. It isn’t real, it isn’t tangible and it isn’t certain. I don’t want eternity. I don’t want to feel that frozen, empty touch that clings to the light-less places where the starlight can’t reach. I can’t see that far, it’s just too distant, too muddled and hazy to do more than guess at. To wonder after and occasionally dream about, but that’s not what I want here, with you. I don’t want that ominous blanket of eternity or a bunch of hollow promises and words; I just want this one moment of reality. I just want this rumpled bed of tangled limbs, faintly lit by misty yellow street lamps, our breaths mingling and our faces near. I just want to capture the faint scent of your soap mixed with the sweat from your skin, I want to linger in the aftershocks of your presence.

Will you be here with me? Just for a moment, that’s all. Your eyes are distant, fixed on a point far beyond my face and mind, somewhere I don’t belong. And I know that. Your future is yours, and I don’t need to be there. But please, just here, just now, won’t you reach out? I’ll meet you half way; I’ll hold your hand and keep you steady in the dark. And when you’re ready to let go, I won’t hold you back, I won’t beg you to stay, I’ll be grateful for the lingering warmth between my fingers, the remembered pressure of your skin against mine.

It’s not true love, it’s not fate or destiny, I don’t think I believe in that stuff anyway, it’s just you and me and that’s all it needs to be. A brief spark of souls found and connected for a quiet passage of time far too small to even measure. We’re just the briefest flash of light in the vast disinterest of the universe, small, easily forgotten, but still bright, warm and real.

So can you just let the future go, just for a moment? I’m not asking for it any longer than that, I don’t need it. Just look away long enough to lock your gaze with mine, just long enough to see the yearning in my eyes. Long enough to hear the words I’m trying to say and maybe the ones I can’t, the ones that get lodged in my throat and wither and die before they can be born. I want you to understand that as much as you need that distant horizon, full of promise and color, I need the here, I need the now. Because it might be all I have, all we have, and I want something to hold onto, just for a little while. Tonight, and maybe forever, all I need is the touch of your lips against mine and the press of your hand against my naked, ragged heart. Give what you can, that’s all I ask, and then you can look away, find those distant mountain peaks once more. I’ll let you go too, I won’t hold you back or burden you with my feelings, because it doesn’t matter. None of it does, now that the moment is gone and mine to keep.

I never would have asked you for forever. I just wanted one moment with you that was real.