A drop of the jaw in awe; A. A tap of the tongue behind teeth where it and gums meet; li, the sound of sex where the mouth’s roof and tongue make love; s, to a feisty halt of clenched teeth, on.
Alison.
My love. My princess.
She wanders around my bedside, elegant in her stark nakedness, and I can only stare and revel in her beauty.
She seems to know I’m looking at her but continues to saunter around, teasing me. She knows I want her.
Birds chirp their minor seconds, and sun pulses in and out of the snow-flecked windows, sporadically lighting Alison’s body. She has a matter-of-factness about her movements—little idiosyncratic twists and turns that could make any man cry out in longing. She loves the way she moves through space, and indulges in her raptures like a ballerina across a stage.
Today marked our one-year anniversary.
A year with Alison. The thought rattled through my head, melodious singsong.
I like the sound of that.
The first time I saw her, my heart beating in my ears, I felt all of it. All the feelings described by the greatest poets, writers, thinkers.
Love.
I approached her in awkward lurches, like a 16 year old learning to drive. My body and mind lost control, and my heart seized the reins.
All involuntary actions—walking, breathing—I suddenly became mindful of. My eyes zoomed in and focused on her, as if switched to an unfamiliar camera setting. The rest—the blurry shelves of Walmart—fell off my conscious’ steep precipice. It was me and her.
I knew, in that moment, I wanted to dedicate my life to her. I would care for her, do whatever it takes to make her smile. I wanted to spend every second with her. Never let her out of my sight.
One year later, the same thoughts have only grown in size, filling every fiber of my being. The moment-to-moment flux of past loves (each day like a flower’s pluck—she loves me, she loves me not—that eventually dwindles down to a sad truth: she loves me not) hardly equates a blimp on my radar. She loves me and I love her, and nothing will change that. At least, not for now.
Although today makes history, each day I spend with her breaks my heart. Her time is limited. She’s estimated another year on this earth and all I want to do is jump up to space and slow earth’s deceiving axis. The more you want to catch time the faster it runs.
She’s locked in the unblinking eye of memory, tattooed on my psyche, but is that enough?
I want to bring her everywhere with me. We haven’t seen Thailand (where she is from), the Louvre, or Venice (The city, not the beach. We’ve strolled around Venice Beach before, my arms around her. The aimless bustle and pot-smoking vagabonds worried her, I could tell).
For god’s sake, we haven’t even finished SVU. We’re on Season 11 (B.D. Wong is our favorite).
Death is painful. But staring at death through the face of someone who’s perfectly alive? That’s worse. Present moments should not be tinged with future ones.
I remember reading about this couple that had been together for 90 years. The interviewer asked, “What’s your secret?” and the wife said, “Don’t be afraid to be the one who loves more.” I don’t remember where I read that. But that’s how I want to love Alison.
I have to summon a courage that I’m not sure I have. I must conjure it out of my undying love.
I finally climbed out of bed, tossed 3 pellets in her bowl, and put on Elvis Costello’s Alison (oddly enough she had never heard it before me).
I watched her eat for minute. She does this funny thing where she holds a bite of food in her mouth and swims around a bit, almost as if to flaunt her acquisition to the empty-finned losers around (although there are none, of course).
It’s the little quirks that will be missed most.
I tried to rid myself of these grim thoughts, violently shaking them off like a wet dog, but they stubbornly persist. Today is a special day, and I ache to be with her, without an introvert’s interference.
Alas, all I could do was ogle, take in all her beauty at once because, one day, I wouldn’t awake beside it.
A lone tear crept down my face, inched along my rugged skin and down into her bowl. It mixed with the water. My world, in hers.
Alison.
FIN