Early mornings are the worst.
A transient time when the deep, dark night starts to fade with the promise of a false dawn.
No wonder the lines become blurred.
Who is making love to me?
The one I love or the one I’m in love with?
Is it fair that when you touch me, kiss me, caress me, all I think of is him?
I know you know and that makes me even more sad.
You love me so much that you’re willing to turn a blind eye to that which looms over us like a shadow.
Now as you move over me, the bristles of your beard leaving tiny scratches on my skin, tears spill from my eyes anew for I once again feel the savage surge of desire.
Alas, it is not for you.
Paradoxes sure have a way of throwing us for a loop especially when it pertains to matters of the heart.
For example, how can you love one and be in love with another?
Don’t tell me it is not possible — there are no rules written in stone that you can only love one person at one time.
One of them makes you smile and gives you a feeling of peace, of contentment, of steadfastness.
The other, well, gives you an element that is missing — something you have longed for all your life but could never put a name to.
A residual memory, perhaps.
In other words, they feel a void that has existed from the time of awareness.
No, this has nothing to do with having your cake and eating it because that is not what is happening here. It is neither a product of base passions nor seedy aspirations but rather something genuinely puzzling and inexplicable.
I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I have tried fighting it with all I’ve got.
But that’s just my sanity speaking. My heart is an altogether different matter.
According to the legend from which the above saying comes, the lunar matchmaker god, Yuè Xià Lǎorén (月下老人), ties an invisible red thread on the ankles of two people who are destined to be lovers regardless of time, place, or circumstances.
And even though the red thread may stretch or tangle, it will never break.
Some may scoff or roll their eyes thinking that people like me will slap on a gobbledygook justification for just about anything to make it sound right in our sight.
I guess then there are a lot of fools out there for believing in something or the other. For taking that leap of faith even when sometimes it feels like we are looking through a glass darkly.
However, that is not what is weighing on my mind heavily these days.
It is the fact that I have something good, perfect for me in fact, and yet my heart craves something nebulous at best – like a dying man gasping for oxygen.
Why, oh why did I ever cross paths with him? And how come I feel this strange connection to him unlike any other?
No matter how I try to forget him or banish him to some nether region of my mind, thoughts of him creep in at every lull in the conversation and at every stop light.
I try to convince myself that he is just another man, confused and weak. However, it does nothing to reduce the intensity of my feelings.
I am lost…
So I pray and pray and pray for guidance.
