You're smiling, brighter than I've ever
seen as the moonlight casts your face in an ethereal glow. The air feels cool
tonight as the first hints of autumn are in the air, but we pay the weather no
mind as we hold each other close to stay warm. Our bodies lay beside one
another on the dock, frequently touching as our legs rub together and
intertwine, a lover's caress. I stroke your dark hair and pull it back to
reveal midnight eyes that sparkle with a brilliance far more luminous than the
stars above. You smile...your beautiful smile has never been more radiant, but
as I lean in to kiss your lips, your face disappears and this world that we
share together suddenly falls away.
I wake up in bed, stretching out my arm
to pull you close but instead grab only empty blankets. The room is completely dark,
not at all like the moonlit sky from my dreams, and I wonder where it was that
I held you in my arms just a moment before. The place seemed familiar, almost
as if I was reliving a moment from our past.
For the next three hours I toss and turn
in bed, a restless night spent thinking about you. I think about what you are
doing right now, if you are laying awake in bed thinking about me too. I think
about our last night together in Boston and whether or not you will ever ask me
to share another with you. And I think about something else too, a very special
day that I wish we could spend together...your birthday.
I have not forgotten. I have not
forgotten how special this day is. Today, perhaps more than any other, is a day
that I want to share with you because it is an opportunity to give you a gift
that will make you happy. It is an opportunity to, in some small way, offer you
the happiness that you give me every day. So I thought very hard about what I
wanted to give you for your birthday this year, a present that would not only
show you how much I love you, but would also make you smile.
Your smile...the same one that I saw in
my dream last night. All day I have thought about that lovely dream where we
held one another beneath the stars. It seems so familiar, but I cannot recognize
where we are, my memory offering only glimpses into a moment where we both held
each other in happiness. But as I think more about my dream, as I remember more
of that moment we shared together, the world around us expands. I see the dock
we are laying on as it stretches back towards the shoreline. I see the still
waters beneath us, black as ink save for the moon's quiet reflection. I see a
lake house just up the hill, a familiar sight that I have known since my
earliest days of childhood, for it has always been a part of my past. My gaze
turns from the lake house to your eyes, casting aside my past to instead look
upon the woman with whom I want to share my future. And suddenly I recognize
where we are in my dream, and what's more, I realize the gift I want to give
you for your birthday.
I wrote you a letter that now sits in
your Facebook inbox. It is concise, barely a hundred words, wishing you a happy
birthday and asking you to come back to a place where I know you were once
happy. I ask you to come back to my family's lake house. I ask you to go there
with me. This is my birthday gift to you Ornela, a gift I am offering because I
know you were happy on that single night we shared together at Compass Lake,
and I just want you to be happy again.
I want to lay beside you on the dock,
staring up at the stars as we talk all night. I want to talk until the sun
crests the eastern horizon and bathes the tips of the cypress trees around us in
morning light. Though you have never seen a sunrise at Compass Lake before, I
promise you that it is the most beautiful sight in the world...except for one.
Looking into your eyes is a sight more beautiful still, and I hope that you
will let me do so again as we lay beneath the stars and simply hold each other
close.
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