it's always the same

The full moon is wide and awake, and like an animal I feel as if I should howl at it. Admire its coming but wish away its madness. I always feel like a bubbling up balloon when the moon is wrung with that fiery glow in the evenings. I am already feeling restless, but this seems to be a common theme with me lately. The bright stretch of sky doesn’t ignite its usual existence of pleasure on my soul. I do actually feel an ugly sickening desire for this moons warped gaze. I am stepping on gravel with four inch heels, my hands wavering against my sides. The evening is cool, crisp with the demise of summer and the start of fall. No I want to scream do not take those brief humid skin bleeding days away from me just yet. Led Zeppelin plays on my ipod and my hips sway to Robert Plant’s voice and Jimmy Page’s guitar. She is sitting on a stool at the bar and I am late. I already recognize her stance, the way she bows her head while playing with her phone but I suppose this is not so uncommon when I am sleeping with someone – their motions become almost like a second nature to my own. Our bodies have come together in moments of desire but tonight I know I will not sleep with her.

I’m so consciously aware of how and when her feelings for me change over dinner that I draw in a quick breath as if I am drowning. My words get stung in the back of my throat, hard to come up in between my lips and finish the story of my lost love. I trickle down the years of Christi and I like reciting some descriptive poem. I even later break into short words of a poem I once wrote after we’d been separated for months but she came back to claim me as her own. I can tell my date is fascinated by this, by how strong willed my love is when it is alive and well. Unfortunately not everyone loves like me. I’ve learned this in all the hard old fashioned ways by having my heart ripped, and gutted for my loved ones to see. It is not my lovers fault in some ways as they never quite had the capacity in them to love as much as I can even though in the end I always feel as if I have just been had, or fooled. I can roll into the story of Christi and I so easily that I only later realize the candle at the dinner table has gone out when before I found my hand roaming near its heated blaze. I was intrigued by its ambiance.

She grips my hand in hers, her caramel skin contrasting with my snow white skin. I can’t tell if our hands fit as I am even more unwilling to give anything about me away right now – in this moment. It is only because I can see in her eyes that she desires me more than she had even an hour ago. Women especially crave the reckoning of love (even if it later drives them mad), and this one is so jaded and cynical about it that in some way I almost feel she has fallen under my spell when that switch goes off in her brain. She has never been loved as I love this is obvious by the descriptive emotions on her face. It is not that I was trying to reel her in – in fact the evening before I was trying to spin her out. I am turned off that she cheated in her last relationship, and it does not seem uncommon that these women exist but I could never betray someone I loved in such a demonic way. I would rather scrape my own heart out and feed it to the dogs. I say this in less words so that she knows I cannot condone such behavior even if she can. It seems silly to me what made her fall out of love with her ex because as an adult I still feel that love should be coveted when it appears in ones life.

Later while fastened to her hip, her big brown eyes fluttering to look at me she asks me ‘will you hurt me?’ and I catch my breath again. Who is this before me? She appears the same stoic, rational woman I first engaged with on that wild evening of longing for me (for my other lost love) but she is different inside. I almost want to explode, swing myself away from her and never look back but I’m fascinated by this change in her. It is just this about me that keeps me there, other peoples emotions have always cast an alarming interest to me, perhaps because I feel so different from everyone else. I’m obnoxious and cruel because I know I cannot love her even if this isn’t what she is questioning. I know that my love and affection take more time than others. As my best friend and I say we are not serial lovers. I do not give my heart away without a grand fight to keep it stored inside my chest. Yes I am a romantic fool but only when it comes to that, when it comes to a hammer slowly breaking down those most glorious walls I have built so high. She does not know me, and least of all understand me. I am not even sure she wants to. There is a part of me that wants to protect her even though she is years, and years older than me she strikes me as a vulnerable bird caught in a nest that is slowly unraveling.