embers bespeckled We met in high school. Technically, I'm still in high school, but really, I've been gone for awhile. My soul, and my heart, were younger then. It was strange that we'd never met face-to-face by the end of my freshman year. Only a grade older than me, he shared some of my friends and most of my acquaintances. We didn't meet until the end of the year, when he, with his two friends, and me, with my friend, decided to beat the long line for school sports physicals by sitting in front of the health office an hour early. The five of us sat there, talking about the sports we played, reading each others' physical charts and making fun of our medical histories. His friend had a hackey sack, and although I'd outgrown the game in 7th grade, I indulged my sudden wish to a part of his childhood, and played as well as I could, which was really pretty bad. We flirted, and signed yearbooks, and through prodding from our friends we ended up "dating" - groups dates in the careless sumer months before his junior year and my sophomore year. By December I had a ring and he had my heart. We were intense - we were each other's first loves and first lovers, although we never had sex. We took advantage of the back seat of his car more often than I can hope to remember, and for one beautiful night, we claimed each other's bodies under the light of the moon through my window, beneath cotton sheets engulfed with passion. We taught each other the first lessons in love, passion and devotion. We wanted to get married. We bought each other rings and painted a picture of our life together. We tasted our future in each sweet kiss, and we had hope, hope, abundant hope for all the years we saw ahead of us - all the time we had to harness the floods of our desperate passion Our bond stretched and pulled under the burden of growing up and growing apart. We broke up more than a couple of times, I fleeing into the arms of friends who had become more. I pushing him away before I could hurt him too much - a foolish notion that I clung too, when in reality he felt all the pain, and more, that I had hoped to keep a secret. I broke his spirit more than a few times - something i deeply regret and will forever feel guilty for. Our love was deep, and the bond that stretched us apart also pulled us back together. We refused to accept that maturity had led us in different directions. But nothing was ever really the same after that first year. Our love is still thick, but that naive belief in seemless and uncomplicated love, that determined hopefullness of youth to see things as we want them to be and not as they really are, will always be missing, and we will never be perfect together again. I have always loved his deep brown skin, the soft skin on his back, the bend of his nose. I cry accepting that I never receive the satisfaction I imagine I will when I return to the spell of his caresses or the dream of his skin. But I will always love him and will always yearn for him with a longing that can't be satisfied, even with the reality of his presence. 030531 ... endless desire what a tragic story dancing upon things that i hope will not happen with my own love i pray it will not happen with my own love please do not let it happen. 030531 ... Fido beautifully written, bespeckled 030601 ... bespeckled thank you 030602 ... birdmad the slow burn runs deepest 030602 ... Cicero a lonely beam peeks over the silhouettes I love and mandolin winds play for me - my eyes seek to make the darkness more blackness - but for the lonely beam I see the deep reds of embers long waiting, fanned by the freedom which I sense in the wind - 040928 what's it to you? who go blather from