The Love I Couldn’t Deny
A rough draft for Fragments of Fiction.
“You were the love
For certain of my life
You were simply my beloved wife
I don’t know for certain
How I’ll live my life
Now alone without my beloved wife
My beloved wife”
Beloved Wife- Natalie Merchant
Dear June,
I don’t think that I ever told you that I had never heard the term ‘love of my life’ until you said it. And I am not sure if I ever understood it until you were gone. Don’t think that I had a clue or any sort of inkling just how deeply a man could love a woman until you came into my life and then left. It is funny but not in a way that makes you laugh that it took you walking away for me to recognize what we had and how much we had lost. I think about the little things and smile with a tinge of regret that even though I saw the future I couldn’t figure out a way to prevent it.
You inspired me to be a better man than I was. You made me believe in something more than I had and reminded me that the dreamer I was didn’t have to live in a world of dreams. You reminded me that I could come out from my world and walk among the people and feel sunshine on my back. For a short time we were the most formidable couple around and everyone knew it. We had the deepest love and the strongest attachment and the most incredible bond that could be forged between man and woman. It was magic. It was music. It was more than words allow.
Formidable isn’t quite the word that I want but I can’t seem to find anything that describes raw power and passion except it wasn’t a weapon or even a tool. We had presence that was unmistakable. That fire between us was fueled by more than lust and more than love. It was fueled by friendship. We liked each other. It wasn’t predicated upon the physical something that existed on that higher plane. We used to laugh about how it was impossible to describe and how people would be irritated by how tight we were. We used to laugh about how we knew that we could be stranded on a deserted island for a hundred years and never be bored with each other.
I remember telling you that we would have to ask The Professor to either create some sort of cocoanut contraceptive or start working on a building an island day care. Love, lust and friendship all wrapped up in one. Best friends who never expected to find each other fell into something and fell for each other in the process.
“I can’t believe
I’ve lost the very best of me”
And now I burn and I ache- living a life alone and apart. I stare at the moon and wonder where you are, what you are doing and who you are doing it with. I look at the moon and send you blessings and greetings. I look at the moon and pray that you are happy and that you do not feel the emptiness that I do. I stare at the moon and try to remember the path back to being the dreamer. I look at the moon and think that if I can find that bubble I used to live in I might find a way to heal and to forget for a while. And more importantly I seek a way to forgive- not you but me.
The dreamer I used to be might figure out a way to make something more of this. That guy might have lived in the clouds but he was smart- much smarter than the man that he became. Maybe if I can find him he’ll figure out how to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Maybe he’ll figure out how to forgive and if he can’t figure out how to fix it than maybe how to forget.
So that if the worse comes to be he’ll figure out how to take a life and rebuild it. But for now we embrace the darkness that surrounds us and learn how to live within it as best we can.
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