He is still here at times, but in body only

His soul has left me.

I miss him most at dusk, when the day’s work has ended

And evenings past times have yet to begin.

Those times in our past when dinner was cooking in the kitchen and

Warm light filled the house.

When before dinner we would walk hand in hand through the

Gardens, across the fields to the edge of the wood

Where the songs of night

Drifted in from the forest and filled our senses.

The essences of early evening,

A feeling more than a time wherein.

We were love and completeness.

We would finish our dinner in the kitchen and

Take our wine to the porch and watch as

The last light faded from the landscape while

The sun’s glow lingered in the treetops.

Evening deepened and the world stopped spinning.

All was calm, all was quiet. And when the hour was late,

We would climb the stairs together and

Sink into our inviting bed.

He always began by sliding his hands over my body as

An expression of his love.

I could feel the heart of his passion

Against my lips.

As his smoking soul ignited the

Fire in my heart,

We would come together in light and love.

The passion almost too much to take as

He whispered words of love and lust in

My ear and held my body and life together in his arms.

It was at those times that my soul threatened to spill out of my body

And wash away in the heat of the moment,

But his strength held it back

Covering it with his love, protecting me from myself.

And each time, as the lovemaking ended and his body

Lay hot and limp on mine,

I would look into his eyes and know,

Just know, that the world, our world, was as it should be.

In that moment I had no darkness to fear, no sadness to run from

Could feel no distance between us in the night.

Instead, the darkness was comforting in its

Completeness, the totality of its effect sealed our fate each and every time.

But in spite of the lust, the passion and heat, in spite of

A love that felt as if it transcended time and space

There came a change.

A change that for me meant an emptying of hopes, an end to dreams, and the pain of knowing that after all the sincerity in the darkness,

It was just a lie and my love would never be returned.

And so it remains a love, a hope, a memory and a dream held only by one

Struggling to survive in a lonely bed at dusk.