NOTE: I wrote this on Friday last week; the things that hadn’t happened yet while I wrote it have already been how and what they were going to be.
As I write this, tomorrow you will travel out of the country. Tonight I am still sleeping in a hotel room, because several of us have had to bunker down away from our old farm house during this week-long heat wave. I’ve been alone this week much more often than usual.
Last night we stayed together, you and me, and I slept on and off but more off than on because I kept waking myself up on purpose so that I could be aware of you there, so I could hold you while you slept and know that I was able to be so close to you in those moments. I am a very sentimental boyfriend.
Tonight I will hug the pillow you slept on. It still smells like your hair, and I keep sniffing it and feeling my eyes blurring with tears again. I am a very sentimental boyfriend.
see
dark curls. smile lines around beautiful dark eyes. lips still rosy from kisses. ceramic and cold iron pendants on braided leather and chain hanging over your shirt. silver rings on your fingers. sleep wrinkles still on your skin. the multicolored tattoos that wrap around your arms. the phoenix feather (me) inked on your right forearm. I am always with you.
smell
sweat dried on sun-hot skin. yesterday’s shower lingering in your hair. deodorant spray. the milkshake you had for breakfast. the pillowcase you slept on last night. you are always with me.
feel
lean muscled arms. the softness of your skin: your neck, your cheeks, your temples. silky strands of curl that I brush back from your eyes. the heat of your body with mine while we are close together. fingers and palms laced together. the pressure of your back against my chest, my arms around you as you lean back and close your eyes for a few moments. I am always with you.
taste
a lingering slight-sweetness of your mouth. salt I’ve licked from your neck. the air we are both breathing together in these quiet minutes before you need to go. you are always with me.
Lately when I’m starting to cry and trying not to, you make faces at me, which startles me and then I’m laughing while I’m crying because it’s so unexpected. I don’t know how long that trick will work, but you did it again as the car was pulling away from the door earlier, while I stood there signing I love you as I tried not to shake with the effort of keeping my shit together, and then I laughed in spite of myself and you signed I love you back.
I know I’ll be okay.
I loathe separations, and it’s been more than a year now of all of us moving in small separate groups, together and apart, across the world to the various places we’ve needed to go, and I am longing for the days when we can all be together in one place again for a time.
What I loathe in equal measure is uncertainty. I don’t know what the timing of some of the big important things are this year, and that causes me no small amount of worry and grief. It makes everything seem less possible when I am in my saddest, most pessimistic moments. I do try not to dwell there but it is difficult lately. Where will I see you next? When will I see you next? I don’t know yet.
NOTE: now it is present-day; this section was written the day I’m publishing this post, on Monday night.
I wandered a long while under the moon tonight; although I was wandering in a mostly straight line, across the yard and then down the driveway, stopping every now and then. The moon is so very, very bright tonight. I can see my own shadows cast along the ground, and shadows from the house, the car, the outbuildings, the trees. I turned left out of the driveway and kept going down the dirt road until I reached just past the edge of this property, and then I turned and came back, the moonlight on my face and the night breeze in my hair.
It is fully dark and a full-moon night here in Australia. It is not yet evening for you right now in Thailand, but even before the sun sets, the moon is still up there over us both. We are under the same Light, and we always are.
I am glad when I remember this.
Our little man went to sleep much more easily this evening, even though he wishes it was you putting him to bed instead of mum and Papa Nix and auntie. He snuggled in after he got to see you on his video call and drifted off after a few minutes of cuddles with mum’s arm. I love watching over him as he goes to sleep. I love being the protective dragon keeping watch over my loved ones in the night.
Someday soon you will be back in my physical proximity and I can watch over you as you sleep once more.
I love you forever. To the moon and beyond it, as far as infinity goes.
xox,
Nix
