Last Chance

Those few months passed quickly through my fingers, filled with joy despite that there was an end date, certainty, a rock in the stream we couldn’t see past. We spent days together, not just Wednesdays but every day we could. I felt bold and took holiday off so we could spend every moment we could together. It was feverish, we both burned hot, desperate, each breath, heartbeat and blink a countdown to destruction.

I’d be lying to myself if I said I wasn’t conflicted, torn between the man who loves Michael and the man who wants what is best for him. Seeing him full of passion means more to me than anything, I want to see where that passion leads to, what it will create, I can’t get in the way as much as it hurts, consumes, conflicts.

I feel as if I have lived more in those months than in the years before we met. Every week is something to look forward to, every moment feels brighter, the autumn nights cool into long winter ones but next to him they're longer than summer could ever hope to be.

Christmas rolls around and we cannot spend it together, family calls and we are pulled apart only for the week and after the two of us are in my house, on my default sofa under a blanket I bought just for the occasion, it is thick, fleeced and tartan, the house has heating but that isn’t the point; I want to craft, feign, an excuse to curl up with him while I can.

“It’s an unlucky birthday, you know?”

“Is it?”

“December 31st, you lose it to Christmas and new years.”

“I liked it as a kid, only one awful round of socialising with family.”

Michael lays his head on my lap and looks up at me, “I want to give you enough birthdays to make up for it.”

“You’re giving me one, that’s good enough.”

He slips a hand into my hair and pulls me down into a kiss, my muscles over extend to reach down that far and he sits up a little to meet the extent of my spine, awkward, pain stretching along my back, burning put out by a cool kiss; I don’t care if it hurts if it’s him.

“Your gift got…delayed.”

“I’ll live.”

In the distance I hear fireworks, their colours splash across his face, reflect in his eyes perfectly, beautifully, I want to commit it to memory, to hold it forever in every synapse of my brain. The year ticks over but I barely notice, there will be more years later on, but there may only be one day when I get to look into these eyes, admire this face.

He has to leave half way through January, an arbitrary Tuesday so we plan one final Wednesday the week before. A final date. It stings.

I want it to be perfect, the best day of the year, my life, to justify the pain that comes after, the life I’ll have to lead without him. I spend the days before hoping it will and won’t come quicker but linear time eventually pulls us to Wednesday.

Beige and sandstone bricks, a warmth like wood, a stack of stones like memories I can’t jostle or it will all fall down. Our temple, chapel, memories baked into the glass of the windows, the reflection in the frames of the painting. It’s perfect, beautiful, lonely but necessary. I have to tell him, with my voice, how much it means.

“Thank you.”

Michael stands as ever, taller than me in personality; an arm loosely about my waist a plaid shirt and plain t-shirt; dirtied jeans and the same satchel as when we met but now I know him, I know so much more, words rattle around my head like molecules seeking to create a whole picture. I am imperfect but I understand who I am more than I ever have. That makes our parting hurt more, what else could I learn about either of is if there was just more time?

“I still don’t think I understand it.”

I look up at the painting that brought us together; the young man aghast at a war larger than him, a life that exceeds every boundary he knows, the red blood already pooling and the dim scenery that threatens to engulf him given the chance.

“That’s okay,” Michael reassures me, his hand squeezing my hip, “I think you just picked something you don’t understand to start with.”

“If it was something different would I have found my answer sooner?”

He pauses, I feel a stillness in the muscles that entwined with mine, sense the slow swirling of thoughts in the head leant against my temple, I know it well, better than my own,

“I think finding an answer at all is more than most do.”

I can’t meet those pretty grey eyes, I’ll cry the moment I look into them. We’ve arranged a meal on Friday, a final meeting on Monday but it isn’t enough even though I told him to go. It’s been barely a year, barely ten days in the year that is my life but it’s the exception that proves the rule; the rule I am a person, that I am loveable, that he, Michael, loves me.

I kiss him, hoping to get the nerve up to say what I want but I don’t then. We sit side by side on a bench facing a painted window to a place neither of us can go, a false promise we can meet up again anywhere, anytime.

“I love you.”

It’s all I can manage without my mind, my throat, betraying me, strangling me from saying what I want to. But I ignore the anxiety to focus on what I do have; him, Michael, in this moment I have him and he has me. One of many goodbyes to come.

“I love you too.”

He replies and I swear I hear the latch in his throat catch the way it catches in me, the swell of emotions that block your oesophagus and threaten to choke you if you try, but it’s enough to hear he loves me, it’s all I need in that moment.