Our love was a victim of circumstance.

Some wounds are carried far deeper than flesh, and although we’d sewn our fractured seams with hope, my scars were etched beyond the place where love was enough to save us.

All that’s left of us now is our memories.

The apparitions lie where you are always lingering in my periphery, remnants of how we’d come to know each other in the most intimate of ways. Often the spectres flashing into view strike with such clarity I have to question if you weren’t just a figment of my imagination all along.

These vestiges of you are imprinted in everything. I hear the sweet timbre of your voice, softly singing as we danced together in the moonlight. I smell your cologne on my pillow, a woody scent that reminds me of the warmer months we will no longer spend entwined. I taste you in every meal we ever made together, the taste of your lips and your skin on the tip of my tongue. I see you in the mirror, brushing the hair off of my shoulders before gently and slowly kissing my neck each evening. I feel you, I just feel you everywhere. I haven’t seen you in weeks but I don’t think you ever really left.

These are ghosts of you, and they haunt me; ever present echoes of how effortlessly you slipped into my life…

We had barely met, when there I stood, disoriented by the immutable rush of our instantly fierce connection. I had been irrevocably marked with an enormity of emotion and a fluency of passion, such that I could never have prepared myself for.

Can we ever really prepare ourselves?

Falling in love is akin to chemical insanity, influenced by a powerful cocktail of neurotransmitters. The deluge of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and adrenaline basically makes us go "ga-ga," somehow our vulnerabilities fade into a well of disinhibition, and in spite of any noticeable flaws, all we come to see is some bizarre notion of complete perfection, as we place our partners upon our tallest pedestals. Perfection... a capricious concept at best, and in this case, it's prejudiced by the clever trickery of our neurochemistry, a top-notch façade motivated by the biological imperative to perpetuate our species.

Still, I think we both felt it upon meeting. It was though we were fused on some cellular level, tangled by invisible threads, our undeniable bond fueled by parallels – as if we were mirrors. Our connection was instantaneous and unmistakable; we could never have fought it. We were immediately inseparable, and to me, you were the kind of perfection that only exists in fantasies; crafted with carefully selected words and delicate illustrations, that danced upon the pages of childhood fairytales.Yet, with every passing moment, I knew you were so much more than idyllic reverie. You walked into my life, and I soon knew nothing more than the beauty of our tender collision, as we wrote our own magical narrative.  

A narrative evolving so rapidly we didn’t have a chance to spill all of our secrets, to uncover the truths that should have been told before our joining. Instead, they leaked through in another’s whispers, and then came the fragmented confessions that eventually sullied us for me.

What we had shared was tainted. You no longer felt completely safe. We no longer felt right.

That’s not to say I don’t take responsibility, too, as you knew there were things in me that made it hard to reach our true potential. We did reach it, though. Even if it remained just outside of our true grasp, it was always inside of us.

I know this because when I closed my eyes captivating visions of our whole lives together cascaded in front of me.  I had seen the way we stood on the precipice of everything real and tangible. I had seen the way you always held me, as I felt the warmth and completeness of every first embrace we would ever have.  Kissing gently under the falling summer rain, our heat fogging up your raindrop specked glasses. Of every argument quietly resolved in the calm words we always shared.  Flashes of lust, the prickles of feverish heat telling me we would discover something new about each other every time we made love.  Our bodies curled like spoons in our shared bed. Your fingers interlaced with mine, flashes of ivory silk and a bouquet of lilies, as we vowed to have and to hold forever.  Your hands gently resting upon my swollen abdomen, and later, our daughter in your arms, a perfect blend of my pale and your tan complexion, with a little button nose and dark curls adorning the top of her head.

I don’t think I ever told you that. That I wanted a life with you.

I’d have frozen time to keep you.

The apparitions lie where you are always lingering in my periphery. Sometimes they are less kind, the wisps of smoke outside reminding me of how you were smoking the afternoon you called me cold, when you dared to question if I really cared. All I wanted was to cede to anger and blame, in some vain attempt to remind you how warm I truly was.

You had never forgotten, though. Apologies and hard work showed me how much you cared and how much love you had for me. This had been your top priority, and I knew that. I adored the way you loved me. You were faultless in the way you attempted to repair us, in the way you tried to show me that you yearned to give yourself to me, and only me. To always be mine.

But everything I felt had numbed, and that was when I knew I had fallen apart. That the part of me I’d given to you was irreparable.  I kept willing myself to forget but no matter how much I tried to control my feelings, change them, coerce them, we were not what we once were. Weeks passed and any semblance of what was home to me still felt so foreign. I couldn’t leave it any longer.

That is how we came to end.  

I was wearing my signature red lips that day. You had always loved the way the flashy sheen of white teeth contrasted against them when I seductively bit my lip, a look of knowing in your eyes, a silent plea for what you knew would follow.

But I don’t think either of us expected what was to follow that night.

With melancholy tones and hushed voices, I had brought us to an end that neither of us truly wanted. I sobbed gently as I confessed the ways I was freighted with distrust and insecurity, and how the cicatrices of pain tore through all the places you used to belong, places I could no longer give to you.  My tears were not solitary, and we held each other tightly in the early evening's fading twilight sun.  We soon drifted into sleep as we tried to cling on to the last moments we might share.

When I awoke, we were both obscured by the darkness. I had no sense of time, nor did I want one, as faint glimmers of the pale moonlight glowed in our room. You had awoken only minutes before me and had been watching me sleep, cradling me tight and breathing in the scent of my coconut shampoo and deeply floral perfume, as though with every deep inhalation you would have more of me to take with you, to hold on to.  You had not known I was awake and were gently stroking my forearm, the pads of your fingers gently caressing my sensitive skin with delicate touches that had always made me melt for you.

You knew it too, and your touch was full of every intention you would no longer come to act upon. 

It was my barely audible whimper that gave me away. Your hand came to my chin, pulling me up toward you, and you kissed me.  Our lips met, gently at first, almost cautious, but before long our tongues were locked in their familiar tangle.  We both knew we shouldn’t, but there was no holding back.

There is something particularly intense about finding one’s way in the dark. It’s always felt like so much more, how every sense becomes so much sharper, the way our bodies strain to sense what clues the light might have otherwise illuminated.  Instead, our eyes would adjust to see through every tangible memory we had ever held in our hands.

We communicated best physically through silent exchanges and unspoken pleas, mapped entirely with other senses for there are ceaseless subtleties to be recognised if one truly pays attention.  I remember the sounds of your hands running up and down my back, and the slip of material beneath them, shortly followed by the sound of pants unzipping and clothes flying as we raced to unravel one another.  Feeling your skin make the subtlest changes beneath my fingertips, every smooth surface becoming littered with gooseflesh.

The sounds of our flesh colliding, of the accidental bumping of enamel in our urgent kisses. The pulse felt beneath my lips as I trailed kisses upon your jawline and down your neck. The small but distinct changes in pitch in the slightest of moans escaping our throats. You swelling in the grip of my hand. The scent of my arousal inhaled between us as fingers and hands and lips explored every single inch of one another.

As I broke away from your embrace, I felt your fear as you clutched on to me, fear that I was suddenly going to leave. I wouldn’t dare. If I couldn’t give all of me to you, I could at least give you a final memory.  

I kneeled between your legs, my fingernails scraping the skin of your inner thighs, teasing you before I lowered my head to you, allowing my breasts to heave against your aching length, their warmth and softness only electrifying your every pulsation.

When I finally sealed my lips around you, for a moment, the world was nothing more and nothing less than the way your thickening flesh filled my mouth. You caressed my cheek as I peered up at you through deep blue eyes, your other hand stroking my hair as it fell in tousled waves upon my shoulders. I could feel in the way your body tensed, how much you wanted me to just devour you, but in your eyes, you wanted to prolong every small moment so that you could take it all in. Eventually, breaking eye contact, I increased my pace as your fingertips fell gently upon my scalp, intermittently guiding me to evoke your strongest sensations.

My right hand wandered to the contours of your hips, drawing small circles in the soft, sensitive planes of skin at the base of your abdomen, before cupping the left cheek of your backside and sinking my nails into you, a signal that I was hungry for you to give yourself to me. I loved feeling the way you would swell even further with lust, an almost imperceptible change but so intimately felt against the softness of my lips, and the way you then gave into the act: your hips thrusting into me as you began to lose your composure. Your hastened breaths and moans only matched by those in my throat as they vibrated around your length, all culminating in the fresh taste of your salty essence alerting me that you were nearing release.

Often I’d lose myself in that moment, craving only to feel the way you would tighten against my swirling tongue and my left hand as I cupped you below and applied pressure with my fingers against your perineum. I’d know I got it right the moment you’d clutch my head with your threatening fingertips, thrusting into my face so that my nose butted up to your mound and you were buried even deeper in my throat. Almost instantly I would then hear a chorus of muttered expletives, helplessly elicited right before you came.

Not that night, though. Those moments were for savouring. For remembering. It couldn’t end here, we needed more to carry with us.

You groaned as I suddenly tore my lips away. I couldn’t help but giggle, for you were startled and disappointed when I left you hanging on the edge of your orgasm, but I knew deep down your groan truly reflected your unbridled desire for what would follow.

I carefully climbed atop of you and, straddling your hips as my knees hugged your thighs, I stared you down and waited. It was mere seconds, but with time contracted to a pinpoint in the moments we were enraptured with each other, it felt like an agonising eternity. Would you pounce, or were you going to leave me in control? 

You didn’t dare move; I think you were too afraid any action on your part might upset the delicate balance we had established.

I steadied myself above you and positioned your length between my lust soaked lips, a prelude to the snug warmth and depth beyond.  We kissed passionately as I rocked gently above you so that the head of your throbbing column began to roll over the engorged bud of my clitoris, and as I moaned into your mouth you suddenly and sharply broke our kiss.

Even in the darkness, I could see so much depth in your eyes. They were a deep and lustrous darkness, like pools of water cloaked in shadow, and they were pleading with me. You were desperate for that gasp; the sharp intake of air followed by the reverberations of a shallow moan hitting the fraction of space between us, as you pushed deeply inside me, as I tenderly opened to you.

We had both been silently agreeable to our efforts to suspend time, but neither of us could take it any longer.

I carefully lowered myself onto you, coating every inch of where you ached with my slick heat. Our gasps and moans mingled as we felt every jolt of energy passing between us, every tiny sensation as flesh welcomed flesh, as you stretched me, as you filled me, as I slowly impaled myself on you. Our bodies pressed closer together until the space between us seemed indistinct, as though particles of you may have forever merged with particles of me. With my chest pressed to yours, our breaths became a synchronous rise and fall.

We became everything fluid then, flawless motions and matched rhythms that were everything impulsive to us, like sharply attuned muscle memory. You were throbbing, thick and invasive within, and I couldn’t help but rise upright, sinking down onto you further, and burying you to the hilt so you could penetrate me at your deepest. My ample breasts begged for you to tantalise them, and as you reached up to cup and caress them, rolling the hardened buds of my nipples between your thumb and your forefinger, I became lost in sensation, rocking my hips faster with need.

You’d once laughed about how when I was above you, you knew when I was about to come because I would suddenly transition from a deliberate and controlled calm, into a reckless and primal chaos. How I’d be steady and rhythmic with every drive of you into my depths, but when those muscles of my deepest recesses began to clamp around you, I’d lose control, grinding wildly to finally reach release.

That night was different, though, there was no hurried urgency from me because I was desperate to prolong what was truly our end. I slowed to feel the way you just throbbed inside of me, and I could see you mesmerised by the small details. You were watching the sway of my breasts, the way my belly creased as I would grind above you, and the way my lips curled as a climbed toward my own pleasurable ecstasy.  

I know we both wondered how that could ever be enough for us. 

When my whole body began to tremble, I clung to you, still, as I struggled to keep my balance. One hand’s nails raked the tan flesh of your chest, fingernails teasing your sensitive nipples, and the other hand gripped your waist, thumb depressing the softness of your belly as you thrust your hips relentlessly. Rhythmic breaths soon dissolved into uneven gasps, and the quiet mutterings of our longing became unintelligible, as between us an increasing pitch of moans spilt out in force.

As I clenched around you, your hands dug into the tops of my thighs, pushing down to hold me closer, a reflexive shift to ensure your final, fierce thrusts remained deep inside of me. When I came, your name fell off of my tongue in broken syllables between shudders and intimate hums. As my orgasm crashed over my body, soaking you in liquid sin, you erupted inside of me, marking me for the last time as I milked every drop of the essence you spewed forth, an intimate signature that would no longer be mine to claim.

We soon collapsed into one another, a breathless and contented post-climactic heap.  We were full of silent appreciations, for words would be too much to bear.  It was in these moments of bliss, that all of our unutterable intricacies were truly appreciated. That we both knew we would always hold a piece of each other forever.  

You soon drifted into a deeper sleep beside me, and I wondered what images delighted you behind closed lids. I pondered what unwritten stories lay beyond the veil of your lips, held close in places so beautiful that no spillage of words could adequately illuminate them. Perhaps there were phrases that would remain unspoken, vulnerabilities only to be elucidated by means which escape our language, the chapters you held that would one day only be engraved with your ceaseless, fervent touch.

But those stories no longer belonged to me.

You left before the dawn.  It was raining outside and the gusts of wind were thrashing against the windows.  I could hear the cars driving past sloshing in the muddy waters settled on the roadside. I suppose such inclement weather was fitting for our final goodbye.

I didn’t let you know I was awake, I thought it would be easier for both of us. You had leant down to kiss me one last time and I tasted the saltiness of the tears that had fallen across your lips. I’ll never forget how painful that was. How much I wanted to ask you to stay, to fold you into my arms and tell you that I’d come to my senses and changed my mind.  

Instead, my last tangible memory of you is the tenderness of your final, wistful, broken kiss.

Memories of you will always be embodied by phantasms that continue to haunt me. But not all of them will come to hurt, for everything we shared is far too precious to be rooted solely in pain.

Such apparitions lie where you are always lingering in my periphery.

***

With many thanks to elliotlacey31 for his guidance in and endless encouragement in my mad scramble to story submission. You're an inspiration and a wonderful friend.