...until the end of time...

Monday night Oct 24 2005 midnight

And so it goes... another day, another night, another week... another month... since you've been gone. It only gathers speed in the night, like a tropical storm over the warm gulf waters... this distance between the moment I live in, and the world we once lived in. Nothing can stop time's relentless, cruel march. The fog of denial seems to hang like a thick, humid blanket over the mind. I'm watching this movie unfold in slow motion, as the time just flies by. It's as if there were two dimensions of time occurring simultaneously - one mired in the quicksand of doubt, the other as electric and instant as a bolt of lightning, daring me to hold my breath, and lose what's left of my remaining years...

I see you, feel you, hear you, smell you, and taste you in my visions - you are so present at times, yet nowhere to be found.

Illusion: maybe you're just a phone call away, or you made a quick run to Zupies or Freddie's, or you're to be found on the list of waiting email messages. Maybe you're just busy, or something.

Maybe you've gone for good, and I still don't realize this, as I unknowingly await your return. Maybe you're writing to someone else, calling someone else, thinking of someone else... having long ago put this silly little life with me behind you. Maybe one of these things is true, but... something's wrong, and I'm getting worried again. Where are you? Are you alright? Is everything okay? Just tell me you are safe, and not crying or sad. Maybe that's all that matters to me, in the end... but it sure gets lonesome without your company all these months.

It's now five months since I left you in baja, not intending to really leave you this way, yet... life's turns are definative, as it turns out. Five months of waiting for you to "come home," in a way. Waiting for your excited words of how the writing has become invigorated by the sun and warmth, and the news of your plans. Thinking somehow, that I might be included in some essential way, in your 'new' life. Five months, broken by the sinking sense that it all went wrong along the way, and you are now lost to me, in a profound way. I find myself still waiting for things to resume, for our lives to pick up where they left off, and for us to look to the future and all the needed changes we must work for. I haven't been able to get off the chair in the waiting room, as I wait for you to walk through the door, new resolve and fresh commitment surrounding you and lighting up your face. It's not to be, as I surely know... yet I can't abandon my post - can't quite give up, yet. I immerse myself in music, and pups, and isolation, hesitating to venture too far from my duty, for fear of missing you... if you should come. So, I grab the sleeping roll, a few extra blankets, and settle in for the night. I know you'll come, I tell myself. I also know you won't come - a message from my inner voice. My loyalties say, "don't listen to the naysaying devil in my soul... it only wants you to admit defeat, and give up." Yet, it's a cold night, and I'm staring at the tenfold hours, days, weeks... months... since I knew you last as mine, and mine alone. Holding onto a love once experienced is a very heavy burden, as the march of time continues... hour after hour after hour, until the end of time...