General Disclaimer: No names, no pack drill. No sex, but some heartbreak. This is a short, and hopefully intense story about lost love. I hope you enjoy it.

This is for my love, who isn’t lost to me.

Comments welcome: You can reach me at Lariel_a@Hotmail.com

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I can’t remember what she looks like anymore.

I try to hold onto her but she leaves me, fading like a rose as the year dies. The delicate image of eyes and mouth and hair is exploded by the stars that dance behind my eyes when I squeeze them shut. I close them again, and try to burn the picture onto my mind, but the stars rush at me all the more and drown her face in cascading lights. I stretch out my hand, wanting to trace the faint outline, but it disappears like smoke circles on the breeze.

She leaves me. Again.

I do remember some things. How her skin smelt, and how soft it was to touch, and how her breath used to sometimes catch if I brushed against her bare arm accidentally. How her eyes wrinkled when she smiled or laughed, or cried. The comforting warmth of her as she walked next to me, almost touching, but not quite. What it felt like to stroke her hair and the way it softly tangled around my fingers like a spider’s web, trapping me in skeins of silk. I didn’t know how strong those silken ropes would be, or how long they would last - or that I would never want to escape. I wish I had stroked her hair more often. Sometimes, whenever I catch a glimpse of cream coloured skin or the faintest hint of rose and honey, I imagine she is back here with me. I reach out to touch her, but the dancing image that tantalises me laughs, and turns away.

She is never there.

The scent of her haunts my waking days. She lingers on the shadowed pathways of my mind, a half formed figure who blows apart my rest and leaves me hollow eyed and aching in the morning. Aching to touch her; to be touched by her. Just to have her near me again.

I miss her. I miss her laugh, I miss her smile. I want her back here, with me.

I love her so much.

So many regrets - how can one person have so many regrets, and still live? I never held her; hardly ever touched her. Never loved her, until it was too late. My heart was too hard; like a stone on the river bed, it stood strong and separate, proud in it’s invincibility. Who could have known that the gentle, insistent influence of the water would break apart that implacable rock? She wore me down, and smashed me apart and neither of us even knew it.

She made me love her. She made me vulnerable, and then left me, fractured and bleeding. Hurting so much. The memories of her are like a worm burrowing into my wounds, but I can’t let her go.

Maybe that’s why I don’t heal?

The pain reminds me that I am still alive, and I need to feel. To feel something...anything, even this agony, is better than the terrifying numbness I knew before. I know that now, although the lesson has nearly killed me. The stone dam is breached, and unfamiliar emotions gush through me, cleansing and terrible like a river in full flood. I’ve never felt like this before, and it scares me. I don’t know who I am anymore, but at least I know that I can feel. She probably wouldn’t recognise me now, but that doesn’t really matter; she helped to make me, but she will never know.

Every night, darkness welcomes me with its endless taunting possibilities, and every night she is there. I just can’t let her go, even though she screams at me to release her. With haunted eyes, she begs me to move on and let her go. She cannot move on without my blessing, but I can’t give it to her. I don’t want to move on without her. I just can’t be without her.

Do you think I like that about myself? I am chained to a half remembered shadow, tied to a love that I never really had. My desperate seizing of a fantasised wraith - no, that does not make me proud. I used to be strong. Look at me now. I hate myself for needing her this much, and I detest myself for never telling her when I had the chance.

I’ll never be able to tell her now. I’m not sure I could even form the words; even to say them to myself feels like I am chewing rocks. Painfully realised emotions spit from my tongue like sharp shards of granite; they tear at my mouth and leave my lips bloodied with the agony of words that I have held in for too long.

Another regret. Maybe my biggest. I wish just once that I had told her how much she meant to me. Told her that I loved her.

Maybe then, I would at least be able to remember what she looked like.

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Thanks for reading....Lariel.

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