Slowly my eyes open to behold the angel beside me. You're beautiful at this hour, your body wrapped only in the soft linens that adorn our bed. Each breath you take raises and lowers your breasts like ocean swells lulling some wistful sailor home, a silent chorus of beauty and wonder. Each breath you take steals mine away.
Slowly I navigate this routine morning commute, my hand fidgeting with the radio in an effort to amuse my wandering attention. Ice forms on my car's windshield today, for the heater is never warm enough to stave off the cold.
You turn over in bed, wrapping both your arms and a sea of blankets around us. "Let's stay like this today," you say. "All day?" I ask. You smile, squeezing me tighter so that our bodies melt together. "Forever Bobby."
The office hums with the glow of fluorescent lights above. A pungent aroma of cheap coffee fills the halls, strong enough to widen my eyes that stare blankly into a computer screen.
We make love for an hour, ceasing only when euphoria and exhaustion overtake us. You let me play with your hair, twirling it in my fingers and letting it fall onto the nightstand where I see a framed picture from our wedding day. We stand before each other at the altar, our friends and family gathered on either side, you in the whitest of gowns...and never a more beautiful sight have my eyes beheld.
I slice my finger on a sheet of paper in some trivial report and wince.
I toy with the wedding ring around my finger and smile.
Hours pass slowly, my time split between angry clients, impatient bosses, and deadlines that wait for no man. I am exhausted, worn down by the continual beating of a drum that demands an ever faster march, which I cannot endure.
Hours pass quickly, my time spent only with you, talking and sharing our hearts. Our attention is given only to each other and I feel exhilarated, alive, lifted ever higher by the love of a woman who asks for nothing save my devotion, which I gladly offer.
My workday is over and I relinquish my suit and tie for tennis shoes and sweatpants as I go for a run around the National Mall. The air is crisp, filled with stinging rain that batters my face and freezes it into the expressionless stare of the countless statues that adorn this city on a hill. It is cold, so very cold.
I hear them running up the stairs, giving us but a moment to reclaim our modesty before the bedroom door flies open and our children come bounding in. "Daddy, you promised me a piggyback ride," our youngest daughter exclaims, and as I hoist her onto my shoulders, our other daughter, already six now, asks you to comb her hair and remove the tangles that always seem to accompany her evening bath. We laugh, we talk, we love...for we are a family, and everything is so very warm.
The day is nearly over and I cook myself a light dinner before beginning my nightly routine of writing my second novel, a work that your memory continually attempts to invade. Whether or not I shall allow it to do so is left undetermined, the decision left solely to the wisdom and direction of my pen. But I lay down my pen this day, for the hour is late and I shall soon retire to bed.
After tucking our daughters into bed, I return to our bedroom where we once again succumb to temptation before eventually settling into our nightly custom of cuddling beneath the blankets. Our hands lace together, fingers intertwined. I play with the wedding ring that adorns your finger and say:
"I remember the moment I gave you this Ornela."
"It was the happiest of my life," you reply.
"You promised me that day that this ring would never leave your finger."
"And it never will."
We make love.
I go to bed alone.
I kiss you goodnight.
I write you this story in my journal, letting the words on a computer screen become my only voice to the woman I love.
I look deeply into your eyes and tell you that I am in love with you.
You read the words in my journal for the thousandth time, wondering why you are letting me speak to you again this night, yet secretly knowing the true reason all along.
You speak the words that set my heart aflame, for you say that you love me. You retreat into my arms, into the arms of a man who holds tight the woman he loves. And as sleep overcomes us tonight, we make our voyage into the sandman's abode together, a world where even the sweetest dreams can never equal the happiness we have found with each other.
Another day apart.
Another day together.
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Six months ago today you told me goodbye. You sent me a short e-mail saying everything was over and that you would not be writing me again. You let me go that day, or at least that is what I believed at the time. But six months later you still read my journal...you still let me tell you that I love you. Ornela, I know that you still read my journal. I have always known. And I know that because you still let me speak to you every day, you never let go...just as I have never let go of you either.
On our first night together at Harvard, I told you three simple words: "You are her". I waited my whole life to find you. I waited my whole live to tell you those words. You are the only woman who has ever heard them, the only woman who has ever seen this part of me -- the only woman I have ever fallen in love with. I knew then, just as I do today, that you are the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. If I am just another man in a long string of those you have once loved, then so be it, but you are something so much more than that to me. Everything I have told you over the past few months, every word I say, is but a poor imitation of a feeling I have for you that I know not how to express. I have given you my words, but I want more than anything else to simply give you me.
Our lives together versus apart are so very different, an essence I have tried to capture in this story. I think about what it would be like to share our lives together, holding each other, sharing our hearts, and falling more in love each day.
So much time apart -- six months, three years, and possibly the rest of our lives. I cannot fill the years with endless words, for such a task is beyond the reach of even the most prolific penman, of even the most forlorn lover. This journal is just an illusion Ornela, a desert mirage that lets you feel my love without my touch. But I am not this journal. I am a man behind the words...a man who has fallen in love with you. I have nothing left to give you save these final words:
I am in love with you Ornela, and always will be.
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