What We Could Have Been...

I remember him in flashes like speckled pieces of gold on the bedroom floor of angels.  I had only known him for some moments and yet that transpired into lifetimes, kissing his lips into eternity and finding hugs that could only be described as everlasting.  There was something about his spirit that moved me, that tickled the soles of my feet, that arched the spine in my back, that made dimples in cheeks that were obviously full of nothing but depth.  


Unbeknownst to me then, we were soul mates or mating souls that decided even if we weren't meant to be, we would be.  Without ever needing justification from the nine planets of the world or reasoning from its great science, we loved not because Michelangelo was a painter or because Galileo was a damn good mathematician - we loved because that was what we intended to do.  Maybe we were born to be greater things than lovers.  Maybe he was supposed to cure cancer and maybe I was supposed to save four little Black girls from a church bombing but we were none of those things and we were not made whole or broken because of it.  We wanted nothing more than to be lovers, uniquely bound by the breath and taste of the other.


Maybe we were supposed to have a big wedding and celebrate Valentine's Day like it was the anniversary of our first kiss but we loved in our way.  We loved on random Tuesdays throughout the year and made love like it was our honeymoon when sometimes it was just quiet Saturday afternoons that seemed to be longing for an interruption of sweet moans and glistening sweat.  I don't know what we were supposed to be but I have long realized what we came to be.


Two fragile beings made strong by the decision to lean against one another, breasts to chest, with my face nestled into his deep collarbone and his hands resting on the bench of my hips.  Being lovers was sufficient and even beyond whatever plans we could have fulfilled.  I never looked at him a day in my life and wished to be anything other than his lover.  I never looked at my hands with his, interlocked amongst my slim fingers and felt like I should have been carrying anything or anyone else.  I never looked at my body like it belonged to me once I gave it to him.  Being his lover had become more than enough.  It had become like breathing and I sustained in that love, grew from it and buried myself in it.  I could have saved the world if only I had time to notice that it needed saving.  You see, when I looked into his eyes, I could only see us and for me, that world never needed to be saved because it was always busy enough saving me.