Once in Love, Never at Peace

I didn't believe that I would miss you so much until you were actually gone. The force of knowing that I would never again have your beautiful, glistening eyes to stare into, and that the half smile on your ever effulgent face wouldn't again be in response to something silly I had said, threatened to stomp on all the hope you had dutifully gifted me over the years. Those years that I had learned the hardest lesson of all; Those years during which I had learned to love myself through loving you.

It had never been easy, after all emotional stability was never something I could have even pretended to possess. Well, for the sake of the team's survival I would fake it, but we both know that I also broken down constantly, clinging to your heart and soul as if nothing else mattered, and I'm still not sure that anything else did. Sometimes even now, thinking of how you would hold me so close that your heartbeat sang a joyful lullaby to pacify all of my tears, I wonder how the thought ever entered my mind that I could live without you when I left you before.

While now I'm proving each and every day that I can't.

I remember how you used to cradle me against you and whisper so sweetly in my ear the three simple words I longed to hear. Ever filled with cynicism, we never claimed that they were anything except a meaningless cliché. Still, you infused them with a brand of passion all your own, speaking volumes beyond any words yet invented. My eyes would get teary in response, and my mouth would embrace your own, melting our souls in the fire of our need for one another. My fear of just how immense that need actually was never allowed me to say those words back, but in compensation I would attempt to spell them out as my tongue danced in your mouth. We'd spend the night trying to forget everything that wasn't us, and in the morning I'd leave before you even woke up, once again letting my fear get the best of me.

Was I ever anything but an awful mess?

But, mostly, we'd fight like the hopeless lovers we were destined to become, and I'd shove away all of your apologies just to whimper and whine my way through another restless night. I never admitted it to you, but I always craved the feel of your breath pulsing against my neck in a rhythm identical to the one in my own heart. And when all was said and done, I always was the one to let your carefully placed kisses mend my broken frame, whispering, "I'm sorry; I'm sorry," in the most desperate way I knew. For, when was it ever any body's fault but my own?

Even now, I know that every regret I possess is of my own manufacture.

And if I could spend the next million years whispering, "I'm sorry," it would never be enough.