Love

It's early Sunday morning, a time when rolling over, snuggling deeper into the bed is a bigger attraction than, say, anything else. The sheets cool against skin, pillows smooshed from all night sleep, for some, hopefully, an arm curved around your body or the warmth of someone close. Comforting, but also sensuous in the promise of what might yet come.

Remember what it's like to be in love? The early stages of dawning wonder at discovering who this person is, the things that make them tick. The look in their eyes as you discover each other. The beat of your pulse when you think of them. Eventual bodies discovering each other and the eventual slip and slide of familiarity that comes from forging a relationship. To be in love is truly a great thing, to be loved back, greater still.

Waking up alone on Sunday morning, going to the coffeemaker and switching it on. The only promise that fresh brewed aroma filling the silent house. I've almost forgotten the blood rush of love, it's been so long. Knowing of settling for less sometimes, just to fill the empty space, transient, even though it is always the same person; so familiar to me that I can still see the hump where his spine curves like the Maracas Road, the sturdy thickness of his calves and barrel chest that I used to rest against. Closing the door again to that, it cannot substitute nor can it make up for all the other things that are so wrong with us. Because really, there is no us, not for a long time, just re-visiting a shred of what used to be, the one thing that still worked in a morass. Knowing, really, there is no more.