An adult stories – For You, Who I Never Got To Love by Prettylynne,Prettylynne Sometimes at night I sit on my back porch and think of you. I don’t know anything about you now, but I think about a timeline in which we are together.
It is a fantasy, to be sure; in this timeline, we never argue about anything, no one ever leaves their clothes on the floor or leaves the bathroom door open at night so the light creeps in. In this timeline, you bring me flowers regularly, but always as a surprise. I have a special vase for them. These are no plastic-wrapped grocery store flowers; the bouquets are different every time. There is always at least one yellow cornflower in the bunch, because you pay attention.
We like the same foods here. There is no reminding you that we need to eat vegetables. No opening the fridge and finding 6 jars of pickles crowding the other food from the shelves. You pretend to love black jelly beans and fight me for the rare few in the package; laughing, you relent and admit you don’t really like them, and trade me for some green ones. You love cilantro and jalapenos and pho and prefer your coffee strong, with cream, and have two cups every morning with me as we sit on our back porch. We watch the sun come up and listen to the birds. The street is quiet around us except for the rising chorus of chirps, the occasional bark of a dog. You ask me if I want breakfast, and I shake my head no, not yet, so we sit together and sip our coffee. Sometimes we hold hands.
Do we have children here? No, I feel too old, even in this alternate timeline, to have any more children. We think about it. I think about staying up at night and rocking a fussy baby, while you sleep in the next room. At 2 am, I come to wake you up, baby still in my arms and shaking you harder each moment. Wake up, it’s my turn to sleep, I say, and you roll over and find your robe at the end of the bed. You take the baby from me and speak to her softly and shush her while I crawl under the covers. You lean over to kiss my forehead as I fall instantly to sleep. But you and I decide we don’t want to have children, because we only want to love each other.
And I do love you. I love you so much, I lay in the tall grass with you and feel the heft of the ground under us, smell the minerals in the earth, and hear the lift of the breeze. We watch the sun go behind clouds, hands joined. I smell rain in the air. Sometimes you lay your body over mine and kiss me, taking my face in your hands and stroking my cheeks softly. Your eyes wrinkle in the corners as you smile down at me. Sometimes I lay my body over yours, hands rasping over your beard, kissing you deeply and hungrily.
You love me enough to put your arms around me when I am afraid and tell me to breathe, baby, breathe, that’s right, and things feel okay for a minute. You whisper those words to me again and again, whenever I need them, and the thing is that I do breathe along with you, my body remembering what it is like to be with someone else. In and out, baby, you say to me, breathing slowly, and my mirror neurons comply.
And when I am calm and I turn towards you, I take your hand and press it to my heart. I am earnest in this timeline, as earnest as I am in my own. I feel everything deeply. You know this of me. You never joke about my feelings, treating them tenderly, like glass figures you are placing in tissue paper, to be examined closely and found valuable.
There are moments in this timeline when you place your hand at the small of my back – not to steer me through a crowd but simply to have contact with me while we move through the world. At the art gallery, we stop in front of a painting of a young naked woman, and I see it one way and I know you will see it another way. But you recognize there is truth in the way I see the world. You hear that when I tell you about a poem, it is not the poem I am telling you about but myself. When we talk about poetry, we let our fingers weave together.
When we kiss, it’s for many more than six seconds, the amount of time our bodies need to feel that rush of oxytocin and bond us together. No, we kiss for hours, sometimes; somehow I never get bored or fidgety or want more than just to enjoy the feeling of your lips on mine, looking into your eyes. Every time you put your hand on my cheek, I feel the same tiny squeeze of my heart. Even now. Even after all this time.
Although there are times when I want more, and you want more. In the dark, I find your body and press my naked self close to you. I don’t need to see to know how to make you feel good when you press yourself against me in reply. Our hands find each other. Our mouths find each other. We move together, silently, slowly, until we reach our climax. We swallow each other’s moans as we kiss. We breathe together.
Other times I want to hear your voice. I want you to tell me what will happen, as it is happening, to take any control I have from me so that I may just feel my body, just be. I want you to say come for me, baby, in a voice that’s commanding yet patient, urgent yet controlled. Like you need it, and you know I need it. Like we have all the time in the world and yet any minute now our time could be cut short. Like you know I’m going to fall, and I know you’re going to catch me.
I lay next to you at night, running my fingers up and down your back, speaking to you quietly and soothing your anxiety. And sometimes I take your face in my hands, kiss your forehead, and hold you to the earth with my weight, moving above you urgently, keeping your pieces together while you split apart in your release. I am here to see that you do not disappear. When you open your eyes again, there is lightness in them, a burden set down.
There is always music around us. We listen while we slice vegetables for our dinner, and while we wash the dishes. I hand you a plate to dry and you kiss me on the nose, and sing the next line in the song. I sing the harmonies, which some people would find annoying, but you tolerate; sometimes we smoke a little weed and then put on lush music, just to wonder at the way each layer makes itself known, to ask did you hear that, and what about that bit, and sit wrapped in waves of sound.
This life is a small, quiet life. We have a garden. We read together among the peonies, you in the hammock and me in a padded lawn chair. At 5:00 you get up and go inside to make us a gin and tonic. The bitter quinine cools my tongue after the hours in the sun. It is a good life.
I could have loved you so well, you know. We could have been so good together.