I wrote it on the train last night; it helped to pass the time.

Sunlight poured over him, creating a furnace, a halo.  It fell through the spaces between the hairs on his head, his face, his arms.  He shone with it, wrapped in its beauty.  He was a stronger man than I was usually drawn to.  Muscular.  Darker, too, up to his eyes.  Those eyes, as blue as an ocean.

 

We were young, still, though we didn't know it at the time.  Life is strange that way.  Fools you into believing you know it all when you know nothing.  Allows you to behave as though you've seen everything when really you're quite sheltered.

 

Anyway, we were young and carefree.  Careless, in hindsight.  We failed to protect our love.  Thought it would last forever regardless.  Perhaps it does.  Perhaps love is as omnipresent as stars.  Maybe still, it is further like stars and fails to shine when the sun is brightest?

 

We should have nurtured our bond.  For it came to pass all too quickly.  And it is now that I miss it.  I do not bounce so easily nowadays, nor open my heart so readily. 

 

I form bonds for life or, more frequently, not at all.

 

Once bitten.

 

Though it has been more than once.

 

Five times shy.

 

Maybe this is why my thoughts are drawn to the perfection of this past.  Of memories.  Hazy times that play out a little differently each time I remember them.

 

For I am simply too wary, too fearful, to look into the eyes of the present and its hopeful man.

 

Deep inside my thoughts, engulfed, I remember the smallest things.  The way his hair bristled in the breeze.  The way his watch face glinted in light, dazzled me for brief moments.  That I could feel his heart beating beneath his skin.  That he smelled of soap, it always lingered on him.

 

Lifted from these thoughts, by a stranger asking to sit beside me on the silent train, I sigh.

 

So much can be lost in an instant.

 

One moment, one decision not made in clarity, and life thereafter is altered.

 

As though the Earth's centre may have shifted slightly.  Enough to throw you off balance.  Enough that nothing will ever feel the same again.

 

At home, we dance the merry dance of lovers.  Yet it is just that - a dance.  A performance, an act.  My heart, for one, does not partake.  He seems not to notice.  Daniel.  The hopeful one.  

 

My present man.

 

In the kitchen, he has cooked, we eat, we smile.  He is funny.  We talk of work; idly reference its people and places.

 

We are calm, in tune; it is easy.

 

I smile, yet inside I do not feel it.

 

This happiness.

 

This love.

It is not the same.

 

For me, it is different.

 

I cannot open myself to love him fully.

 

I see it in his eyes.  Daniel.  The love.  I see it.  The glint and sparkle of a man who will die for you.  A man who gives his heart to make you smile.

 

The difference is I have seen it before.

 

Twice since I have been fooled, then burned, but the first love I saw was real.

 

And to this I compare my Daniel.  The hair, the arms, the face.  Those eyes.  He does not compare, how could he?

 

No man could compare to a memory.

 

Rose-tinted, perhaps.

 

But one whose strength refuses to die.

 

A memory that wakes me in the dead of night, reminds me of a better love.  Of one richer.

 

Poor Daniel.

 

You can never compare, my Daniel, to a dream.

 

That you try makes it easy to stay.

 

To live this lie.

 

To dance this dance.

 

I love you, yes.  But not as I loved him.  And not as you love me.

 

The passion I see in your eyes, my Daniel, is not harnessed in my soul.

 

How I wish words came so easy in life as to paper.