The Fall

by Tal Bauer

This is a wound in the center of me that spills out a grief I don’t have the right to feel.

When I leave this moment behind, it becomes memory, and memories

He’s a stranger I know better than anyone.

The air between us crackles. Every breath I take is his exhale. His eyes search mine, and a part of him breaks. I see it happen, the exact moment his control shatters.

I may have existed before I met Blair, but I never lived until I loved him.

I loved him once without knowing why. I love him now knowing everything. I’ll love him always, even when time steals him away again.

He is the calm at the center of my cataclysm, my only fixed coordinate, my shore in the tides pulling me out to sea. “You and me, Kicks,” he says. He is what the universe will take from me. “You and me, forever.”

Time is a river that only flows one direction, but I am the stone in the waters. I will break the waves before they crash against Blair’s beach.