Pain is Universal

He promises to be careful.  His hands are dirty with paint and stained with nicotine.  Rough in places, smooth in others. When he touches me I forget the bills, the wrinkles, and the wish for something different.  I just think of him.  He makes me believe in eternal summer twilight, not hot but not yet cold.  The slight breeze lifting your hair, tickling your cheeks.  He makes me feel young, beautiful, incomparable.  He worships me with his words, prays at the altar of his desire for me.  He is imperfect.  Not the dashing handsome prince you imagine as a young girl. His crooked smile teases me.  His height makes me feel small.  The way he looks down at me makes me feel powerful.  He makes me feel alive.  We sit across the bar and imagine ourselves alone.  His mouth on mine, his hands touching me, our bodies pressing together in the smoky room.  Friends see my face and wonder who it is that makes me look as if I have just made love.  I laugh and say it is nothing, they imagine it.  He smiles slyly and catches my eye as he takes a drag from his cigarette with the same lips that have gave me so much pleasure.  He blows it out as he watches me across the table, his eyes intense and full of passion.  Our secret makes us giddy.  We can’t be together, not really.  Other lives are affected by our choices.  So we live each day full of want and need.  Dreaming of a day when we could be alone.  Our hands making trails down our bodies, our mouths forming words that aren’t planned and spilling them into our lustful ears.  Languidly memorizing our skin with our fingers and our eyes.  Exquisitely slow kisses, tasting each corner.  He says he knows my smell.  Sometimes it is there when I am not and he closes his eyes and imagines me.  I find my own thoughts drifting towards him as well.  Wondering if my flesh feels the same in his hands as it does in mine.  This desire.  It is killing us.  We try to stop and always come back here, to this spot where we are bound.  So he promises to be careful.  I promise my heart is really his.  We make these vows all the while knowing this sweet essence isn’t really ever going to belong to either one of us.  So we grasp tightly to what we can as the rest slips away.  And his eyes love me.  Oh God how they love me.