The Last Touch

This is something I wrote in April 2008.

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You stand by the wall, the shadow of your silhouette tracing a soft contour, just like your skin. The lights are low, lazy photons filtering from beneath the lamp shade, caressing you face, unaware of the danger. Entranced by your eyes in the reflecting glass, you are frozen next to the mirror. It is a peculiar change, I agree. Perhaps the very essence of frightening - to look in your own eyes and see someone else staring back at you.

You look just as beautiful as you did that night, so many years ago. The years have not aged you, instead adding a weathered calm of maturity that simply made your inner light more visible to others. "I wish to be its only perceiver", I remember thinking that night when you took off your shoes and sat down and looked at me that way for the first time. We were both exhausted from the dancing, from the constant stream of guests asking for a blessing, from the photographers, from everything that went on that day in our minds. Do you remember entering the hotel lobby and being swept off your feet into my arms and being carried to this room, your perfume mixing with mine into an olfactory pleasure that covered the stairwell with a hazy fog of emotions? Do you recall the old French wine on our lips by the nightstand a few moments later, as we talked about nothing at all? Of course you do. It is as clear in your memory as it is in mine, bright as a flash of a million suns, igniting the matter of our souls.

Tonight is our last night. It was your idea to come back here, "to complete the circle", as you said. I look out of the window at the city spread out beneath us, basking in its electric lights. It is quiet, as the silence now between us. The moment has come. Coming up behind you, I lean towards the back of your neck, feeling your warmth on my skin one final time.