the simple act of loving isn't enough

I'm interested in the idea of seeing the two of you together. I want to watch. I know I never will. Does she bury her cold face in the warmth of your neck, to keep her nose warm? Do you let her, as you did me, grimacing from the cold embrace? Is she mercurial and quick tempered, like I am? Like I was, with you? Hot and cold again by turns, but always ready to take your cock in my hands and make love to you.

Do you kiss her like we kissed? Soft at first giving way to more insistent pressure and the growing sense of urgency? After love-making, do you pat your great chest and lie back, inviting her to enjoy the warrior-eque plains of your chest as you utter a simple command? I loved that. I like your self assurance and your monosyllabic approach to the complex patterns of everyday love.

When you make love, is she eager and yielding? I can't imagine you fucking a woman who showed signs of resistance. I can't imagine you fucking. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to imagine you riding her, you're big body belittling hers. Your silent stamina driving you both towards orgasm. It hurts.

It hurts.

It's not the leaving that did it. It's these images that are my destruction. My ultimate assurance that I loved you. My hands shake when I imagine you trading the same language of tenderness. I can feel the weight of the world in the back of my throat as I try to swallow these feelings. My rebellious imagination is making the pain in my insides resilient. I want it to end. I go on cutting myself on the jagged edges of regret. Does she moan when you stroke her and hold her head close, so close you're not actually kissing her, although the air you are both breathing is the same?

I ache to let it go. Whatever it is that you have with your new beauty, this woman that you chose over me, let it be different. Let your new feelings inspire a whole separate part of you, awakened by our parting, removed from the man that I loved. I don't like to think that now we are middle aged, we are mannered and the receptacles of our love are interchangeable. These thoughts destroy me.

I'm stroking another man's fair hair as he shudders and recovers, lying across my naked torso. I've perfected the art. I can caress a lover in such a way, he need not look in my eyes. I'm afraid I'll see something in the depths, something I was always searching for in yours. I remember finding it as you loomed over me, held up by the strength in your arms, thrusting your cock into me, possessing me and not only with your man- meat. We were all that mattered to each other. I saw an indescribable emotion in your eyes. Love? I don't know. I certainly haven't seen it for a long time.

I miss the warmth and the comfort of your arms. I miss your artless conversation and silences that spoke of your need for solitude, in opposition to my incessant chatter. I believe we were meant to meet. Perhaps we were meant to be separated. I know I ache for you, in the recesses beyond what is changeable, under a blanket of disbelief and beside the embers of my self esteem.

There is something to be said for compromise. A trait which we both might aspire to, although neither of us can happily, truthfully admit we possess. For all the broken summers and the plans we had, I have but this; I loved a great man.

In life, sometimes the simple act of loving isn't enough.