Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 18:11:48 GMT
From: Emily A. <emily288@hotmail.com>
Subject: Lost and Found

For Martha.  Comments, questions, constructive criticism welcome.  Email
emily288@hotmail.com

  As I lay beside you in the night, the moonlight penetrates the window
curtains enough to throw your silhouette into relief.  I watch your breasts
rise and fall with the slow, gentle rhythm of your breathing.  Your face is
turned away from me slightly, and the moon glow highlights your high
cheeks, your slightly turned up nose.  I'm filled with warmth, contentment.
If I were a cat, I think I would purr.  I feel giddy, almost like a 13 year
old.  Just three months ago, I didn't think I could ever feel this way. I
didn't think I could ever be in love again.
  You were the first person I had ever truly fallen in love with.  You were
the first person, who wasn't mother, father or some other relative, to whom
I had spoken those three words.  We met almost three years ago, both of us
nurses, both of us volunteering a couple of times a week at one of the free
clinics.  I liked you, admired you, right from the start.  You were open
and friendly, smart and compassionate - a good nurse, but more.  In your
care, hostile patients lost their belligerence, the frightened patient felt
secure, and the children always wanted to play with you, to touch you.  You
had that way with people, you still do.
  We were friends, good friends, before we ever became lovers.  It didn't
take us long to understand that we were attracted to each other.  But we
each had had enough of college romances that lasted a couple of months, or
encounters that lasted a couple of hours.  We had time, we wanted to be
cautious, so we went slowly and we became good friends.
  Six or seven months passed, then, after one particularly tough Saturday
at the clinic, you said that all you wanted was a shower, a glass of wine
and a back rub.  I said my place was an easy walk...We picked up Chinese on
the way, but we never got around to eating it.  We made love that night for
hours.  My tongue all over your breast and nipples; your tongue between my
legs; we explored each other in ways I had dreamed about since we had met.
My fingers, deep inside you, I felt your spasms and thrilled to your
orgasms, as if they were my own.  Your fingers inside me, your tongue and
lips caressing my clitoris, lifted me up on seemingly endless waves of
passion and pleasure.  I loved the scent of you, the feel of you on me, in
me, next to me.  You took me to new and wonderful places, but remained my
link to reality.  Intertwined limbs became intertwined hearts.  We had sex
that night, but we made love.  For me, you had changed everything, forever.
  After that, we were inseparable.  I don't remember who suggested moving
in together, but within the month we had.  These were the giddy days, days
when work seemed to drag until the time I could rush home to you, to your
arms.  When I came through the door, panties wet and nipples hard with
desire, I'd die a little if you weren't already there.  Often we made love
before we even took time to eat our supper.  I loved to undress you, to
peel the clothing from your body, saving your panties until last, while I
feasted on your lips and then your breasts.  I loved your breasts, smaller
than mine, but firm and little upturned like your nose.  Your nipples were
long and grew longer when I aroused you, and I loved to circle them with my
tongue.  And when this caused you to start to moan, I knew you were ready.
My mouth would start its greedy trip down the valley of your tummy, towards
the center of you.  My hand, already caressing your thighs, would move up
to find your warm, moist folds.  My fingers would slip between them,
sliding back and forth, occasionally moving up to circle and just touch
your clitoris, swollen and straining out of its hood.  And when my lips
found the wiry patch of your pubic hair, they dropped immediately down to
your clitoris.  Gentling running my teeth across back and forth over it, I
would penetrate you with my fingers, feeling your hips rise from the bed to
draw them ever deeper.  Swinging my body between your legs, my tongue would
travel down through the folds and back up to your clitoris, while my
fingers did their magic inside you.  And I would feel my own orgasm
building as I watched your face reflect the pleasure I was giving to you.
And when I had made you cum until you couldn't cum anymore, you would start
on me.....
  The giddiness of our first weeks together gave way to months of deep
contentment.  These were the days of quiet evenings spent together, passion
mixed with laughter, food shopping together, sex and housework.  For
eighteen months, I was happier than I had ever been in my life.  I didn't
even realize it when things started to change.  But, then, one day I
noticed that your eyes no longer seemed to quite meet mine when we talked;
the words "I love you" seemed to fall less frequently from your lips, the
nights spent lying together, holding each other grew fewer.  At first I
suspected, then I feared, and then I knew that there was someone else.  We
never could keep secrets from each other, and one beautiful Saturday
morning I asked you.  Your lovely green eyes started to fill and you turned
away from me, your lower lip beginning to tremble.  You said it had started
as a friendship at work.  You had not wanted it to be more, you had fought
to keep it from becoming more, but in the end you couldn't help it.  The
pull, the attraction between you was too strong.  You had fallen in love
with Him.
  Him.  The word exploded in my brain.  I had not expected, not even
suspected it.  Him.  Stunned, I asked if you had, if the two of you
had......I couldn't find the words to finish asking.  But the look on your
face, in your eyes, told me, before your words, that you were lovers.
That's when the shock gave way to the hurt, to the sharp, physical pain in
my chest and in my heart, that made me think I might be sick.  The pain
that would dull during the days to come, but continue to ache for the weeks
and months that followed.  And I felt tears, rolling down my face, falling
on my blouse.  I couldn't look at you.  I knew that you loved children; I
had seen the wistful looks when we encountered laughing families in the
market, at the park.  I knew that your parents' disapproval of our life
together weighed heavily on you, but I never suspected.  If it had been
another woman, I would know what to say, how to win you back, but
Him.....how do I even begin to understand losing you to Him?
  You wanted to tell me about Him, to tell me He was kind and good and
gentle, but I couldn't listen.  I didn't want to know.  Instead, I asked
when you were leaving.  You said that He was going to help you tomorrow,
Sunday.  I said I had to be at the clinic very early.  You see, I couldn't
hate you.  And if I met Him, knowing that you loved Him, I couldn't hate
Him either.  And that was just too much.  I left you sitting there, tears
on your cheeks.
  I went for a walk in the warm spring weather, averting my eyes, avoiding
stares from strangers.  When I came home, you were gone and I was by
myself.
  Hours became days and days became weeks.  I learned to take my love for
you and my ache for you and lock it away in a seldom-used part of my heart.
Every day I would take it out for a while and I would let myself feel it
and I would cry for the loss of you.  I would hug the sweater you had left
behind, hungry for the smell, the odor, of you.  But, as the days became
weeks, I took the ache and the longing out less and less; my tears became
fewer and fewer.  Sleep returned, and though the memory of the love and of
the hurt lingered, the ache subsided and I learned, slowly, to smile again.
  Then today, when I came home, the door was unlocked.  I opened it and
there you were, sitting in my grandmother's old wooden rocker, a suitcase
next to you.  I stepped inside and you stood.  I felt that locked part of
my heart starting to open and I pushed against its door to stop it.  The
sudden, unexpected need to slam it shut made me momentarily cruel, and I
asked why you were here, if He had thrown you out.  I saw you wince as my
words struck home and felt tears begin to sting my eyes, as you said, no,
you had left Him.  My heart was suddenly chilled and I asked if He had hurt
you.  To my relief, you shook your head no.  I felt confusion, I started to
ask why, but you walked to me and put a finger over my lips, silencing me,
and you said
  "I left Him because He wasn't you."
  I felt the lock on that place in my heart break and all the love and all
the longing that I had stored there, that I had tried to forget, came
tumbling out.  I felt tears welling up and rolling down my cheeks.  As I
wrapped my arms around you and pressed my lips to yours, I tasted the
saltiness of your tears mingling with my own
  I don't know how long we stood together like that, holding each other and
kissing.  I don't know how we found our way to my, to our bed, to make
love.  I remember your hands and your lips gliding over every part of me.
I remember the sweetness of your scent, and your moans as my tongue circled
the nipples I so loved, and my fingers penetrated the moist folds of flesh
I had so longed to touch again.  I remember that, our passion momentarily
spent, we went to the kitchen to eat ice cream and that we returned to our
bed with a bottle of wine and glasses and renewed desire for each other.
And I remember that this time we made slow, languorous love until late into
the night.
  And now, I am laying here beside you, content.  Too content, even for
sleep.  Tomorrow, there will be questions and probably some awkwardness.
But love, and answers too.  And we will sort things out.  So, for now, I
think I'll just lay here and watch you sleep and continue to be content
that you are here, with me, again.