“Love is something eternal.
The aspect may change
But not the essence.”
Vincent Van Gogh.
They say the heart only loves once, the heart beats for only one love.
From the moment I saw her, my heart knew nothing else, nobody else. It sang only for her; beat the bitter, fiery blood through my veins, only for her.
She felt the same. She was mine. Only mine.
She had not just given me her heart, but her soul too.
No words were needed to show me that she felt the same. Her touch, soft moans, and her desire for me was a language we were fluent in.
Our love was an inferno, a perpetual furnace that burned within.
She loved me for me, even with my demons and the nightmares that stole my peace at night. She helped lay them to rest, to put out the fire that threatened to burn me alive.
My soulmate; crafted from the heavens, just for me. My angel. My life.
Without her, I’m a dead man living in a soulless world.
Now, that is the life I live.
Her father stole her from me, and it’s been a year. Yes, I’m breathing, but I’m not living.
If I don't show my face to the world, my business suffers. That's not a risk I'm willing to take, so after I make my entrance, put on my show, I'm done.
In the darkness, I think only of her, my door closed, keeping away anything else that could distract me from the memories I refuse to let go.
Remembering the sound of her heart, that beat only for me, is the one thing that's keeping me alive.
“We’ve found her,” I hear Aiden behind me.
I swing around in my chair to face him, my eyes locked with his. “Get her.”
Without any other words between us, he leaves, and I wait for his return.
I don’t care where he has to go to get her.
I don’t care what he has to do.
I don’t care how long it’s going to take.
I’ve waited a whole goddamn year for this day; I can wait a little longer.
It’s been almost a year of drawing these eyes, whose color is like the ocean on a warm sunny day. In them, is a color like the sun reflecting off the water as it shines; they have a hint of amber.
It’s been almost a year that these eyes have taken over my nights.
I close mine, and they're there. They wander in my dreams where they drink me in, burning into me: a fire of passion.
Who do these piercing blue eyes belong to? I don't know.
I've spent countless hours going through the men I've seen in my lifetime - even tried to remember the man at the coffee shop, but not one of them had these eyes.
These eyes draw me in.
These eyes drink me in.
These eyes are only looking at me, and nothing else.
I bring my cup of hot coffee to my lips as I pick up my pad and spend a few more moments staring at the image I've drawn of my mystery man who has taken over my life.
“Who are you?” I whisper to myself and drop the pad on the table.
If these eyes can make my body feel a million things in my dreams, what could they do to me if I saw them in person? I don’t even know who they belong to. But, one thing I do know, these eyes are taking me into a world that I don’t know I belong in.
I flip my wrist to check my watch and see the small hands ticking away. I've been up a while now. I would've liked a few more hours of sleep before starting my shift at the restaurant, but my dreams took me to another place, preventing it. The pleasure took control, the blue eyes stared at me. My inner thighs jolted as his lips touched me, pleasure overflowed from my body, and it made me wake up.
I get up and start getting ready for work. This is my first real job. I’ve had jobs before, but never for too long.
Most of my life I’ve spent in a hospital, that was my home, and when I finally got to leave, there were days that I was too sick to go to work; in the end, my managers would let me go.
I never had the love of a family around me when I lay in bed wondering if I was going to make it another day, or not. I got passed from one foster family to another, none of them knew how hard it was going to be to look after me. They never knew about the endless hospital trips, sometimes I had to be in there for a week or more before I got to leave. But I never hated them for it. I mean, there were days that even I thought why am I here, again? I started to hate being there.
As I got older, I hated my life. I mean, what was there to live for? I had no family, no friends, no one that loved me; and if it wasn't for the state insurance, I knew that there was no way I was going to survive the medical debt I’d have been in.
When I turned eighteen, I told my doctor that if it came down to it, they were not to save me. If my name dropped further down the list, I didn't want to live anymore.
My parents didn’t want me; who did want a baby with congenital heart disease? First it was a small surgery, but as I got older, things got worse; the doctors told my parents that I could die any day, because my heart was too weak. They knew they would have to spend hours at the hospital even days, maybe weeks, making sure that I lived; this meant taking time off work, losing no end of money, whilst the bills mounted up. One day would come when my name would be put on a heart transplant list, but it was going to be a long wait. If my parents didn’t want me, no one did. What was the point of living?
I’d spent twenty-four years in and out of the hospital, talking to one doctor then the next. Then one day, the latest doctor walked in and told me that it was my turn, that I would have a life, if everything went well in surgery.
I wept. I wept for fear, I wept for joy. I wept because, after twenty-four long, terrifying, painful years, I was finally going to live. My hands began to tingle as I listened to every word the doctor was saying. So many things were happening to me, my body didn't know how to handle the news.
My brain scrambled, as the news finally hit me; my body trembled at all the questions running through me.
Was this a dream? Would the doctors tell me I'm still on the waiting list when I woke up?
Then fear ran through me. What if the heart rejected me?
I would have to live in a world I've never been alone in, would I survive? How was I going to find a job with no high school diploma?
The doctor kept telling me I needed to calm down, my heart was beating too fast. They told me to think of the good in this, and what I could do with my life.
I closed my eyes, settling my breathing.
The bright side, was there a bright side? That was my first question to myself.
I had to say thank you to God, giving me a chance to live, follow my dreams. The dreams I drew in my pad, places I wish I could visit one day.
Now I'm getting that chance.
It's finally my turn to live. Six months after my surgery, the doctor said I was doing great, and I had nothing to worry about, though I should still take it easy. But no problems. The feeling that ran through me was entirely new: relief. My body relaxed, as the heavy weight was lifted off of my shoulders after years of pulling me down.
Peace, I finally felt like I was at peace, not living in the thunderstorm which had become my life.
Even a year after my surgery, I still sit in the darkness of my room, as my thoughts go to the people who had to lose a loved one for me to live.
Was it fair that this was happening? Should I have spoken to them after and told them I’m sorry about the situation?