Hold

He sleeps as I hold him. Tight. Warm. Tender.

I press the tips of my fingers against the skin that I touch. These fingers, these extremities of my own, sharing my energy with his, feeding off of the touch. Does he feel the touch in the same way?

Sure he is sleeping now. He may not realize the touch is there. The energy. The flow. Perhaps he does though. Within his quiet dreams he can sense my senses throughout his physical system which reverberates within his physical system which gives him a sense of more than himself.

I stretch my arm around him a bit further. Hold him tighter. Feel the light hair on his chest against the inside of my arm. It feels soft and light. It gives off a soothing touch to me. I wonder if he can feel these things. I wonder as he sleeps. Quietly.

My eyes are open. His are not. My pupils are dilated from the dark but still can see enough to him to hold my attention. I realize continually how beautiful he is. It seems inconceivable that I am here next to this person, this warm sentient being, this aura of nature, this physical life. This being is here with me, allowing my touch, while he sleeps. He must believe that he can trust me enough to be alone with him and have him in my arms as he sleeps. And yet, I wonder, what does he truly think of me? How did we get to this place and time where one day I am holding him while he sleeps when another time before there was a time when we knew nothing of each other and the thought of having me, me, who I am, me, holding him, who he is, would have been furthest from his mind. And these dreams that I have had in the past of holding someone next to me, could they have conceived a time like this, the quiet stillness of the night when I have in my arms someone so gentle and beautiful and asleep.

My mind wanders to what he must think of me. What he must truly think of me. Oh, I know what I think he thinks of me. And, of course, I know what he has told me he thinks. For that, I have parsed every word, every nuance, every syllable, into innumerable measures of thoughts and respect and affection and hopes and dreams and reasons. But, how do I know how he truly thinks and feels. Perhaps what he says is the opposite of what he really means. Perhaps the way he says what he says is misinterpreted by my mind into making a different sense for my mind instead of the sense that it made for his mind and I am completely wrong about what he is or thinks or wants or why he is even here, in front of me, being held by me, with my arms wrapped around him, as he sleeps.

I can see his ear directly in front of me. It’s a regular ear. A normal ear. An ear for hearing. Just like every other ear in the world. Some hear, some do not, some better than others. All ears are pretty much made the same for the same reasons and make the same functions as any other ears out there in the world. I suppose. But I wonder. Here is his ear, directly in front of me, as he sleeps, as I hold him. Can he hear my thinking? What if he can hear my thinking? What if he isn’t really asleep but pretending to be asleep so that he may surreptitiously hear my thoughts while I think he is not awake so that my thoughts are more clear to him because he has this sixth sense ability to hear thoughts when its quiet, as it is quiet here tonight, in the stillness of the dark night, while my eyes are open and my pupils are dilated, and my thoughts are more open and full because I believe he is asleep and I am lulled into a sense of feeling as if he is comfortable in my arms because that is what he wants me to think since that is what he wants me to think so that I think more and more so that he can hear more and more of my thoughts so that he can use my thoughts against me in the days and weeks and years ahead. Whenever and wherever we are, I am the one who is baring my soul to him, without my knowledge, because I am speaking even if I am unawares and he is listening with his strange extraordinary gift that no one knows about but him.

Oh, wait, what if he isn’t the only one with this gift? What if it’s actually a gift everyone has and I am only a pawn in the rest of the world’s game to hear my thoughts and my ideas and my repugnant notes that I didn’t mean to think but my mind races sometimes and I think them and then I try to put them out of my mind but they still went racing through my mind without my full consent. How would others react? Perhaps they already know what I’m thinking all the time and I am simply the anomaly in the world that cannot hear what others are thinking and it’s a world-wide secret to keep it unknown to me so that everyone can hear what I am thinking so that they can make fun of me behind my back?

Ok, ok, ok, ok, I’m going off and off onto a wild plane of thoughts that make no realistic sense. I know, I know. I need to be real. He cannot hear my thoughts. No one can hear my thoughts. I know it’s not human. It’s just my thoughts overwhelming my sense of self to make myself feel more vulnerable and worried than need be.

So let’s get back to reality and remember that these thoughts are only thoughts and not really thoughts that need explaining but are simply thoughts that occur late in the night as one is holding one’s other and seeing in the dark with dilated pupils and the mind wanders and wonders in many unexpected territories.

What would happen if I whisper a sweet nothing into his the ear that is directly in front of me right now? I mean, a true sound, not one in which I am imagining he can hear my thoughts, but a real sound that I mean to make with my vocal chords and my tongue and my lips. What would happen? Would he hear this sound? Would he hear it enough to wake or drift awake slightly or awaken fully or would he not hear it at all but hear it only in his unconscious sleep and perhaps it will effect only his internal microcosmos of cells and DNA and other nucleuses and microns and negative and positive neutrons and all those internal gizmos.

If I whisper something now, wait, should I, truly, express this energy forward to where it would possibly effect him? Or should I not expend the energy at this time, wait for a better time, perhaps in a few seconds, perhaps in 5 minutes, perhaps in the morning when I know that he is awake. Perhaps I should never speak into the ear in front of me. Perhaps I should not even be here. For really, how did I get here and he get here to where one of us is holding the other and one of us is asleep in the other’s arms? How do we know that this is all real anyway. What if I am the one asleep and I am only dreaming this dream that I am awake with the lights off and my eyes dilated and my arms wrapped around someone next to me that I wish and hope for but that is not really in front of me in the real life because it is only in my dream life state of being. But let us say that for the sake of argument and the time being that this is the real life and I am truly and naturally holding this person in front of me with my arms while he sleeps. So I am really here and he is really here and we are really together, this night, this time, for right now, in this moment, and I can feel his energy next to mine and he, supposedly in his unconscious dreamlike state, can feel my energy next to his. And I am holding him and he is being held and in this next moment I am taking in a breath and then breathing it back out in a quiet soft sigh. I wonder if he can hear that quiet soft sigh that I just expressed. I did not mean for it to be heard, but what if it made just loud enough of a noise that he could hear it, or what if the sigh was expressed through my body enough that my chest raised just a bit to where it pressed against his back just a bit which was enough to compress his back to where he felt it and my energy touched his energy a bit more and he felt it and awoke and thought about what it was to be lying here next to me with my arms wrapped around him while he slept?

Does he like the fact that I am holding him while he sleeps? Does he like it when I press my fingers on his skin and feel the hair that is on his chest while he is trying to rest? Does he wish that I was not really here and had gone before the time for bed so that he could really rest and that my being here with my arms wrapped around him while he slept was in actuality a hindrance to his getting a good night’s rest but he is too much of a gentleman or has an inability to speak what he truly feels and just let me stay with him in this bed holding him while he slept so he never said anything even though he may have wanted to but did not have the words often like we all often do not have the words we mean to say so we put up with people and things and situations all the time that are truly things with which we need not put up with and situations which are rightly sung in songs around the radio dial where we finally realize that we can speak up and be of ourselves fully and then are lionized on the daily talk shows for those who finally got up the gumption and the nerve to speak up enough to raise their voice against the issues and situations that are of a nerve to them and they are proud of their inner and now outer strength and they are again lionized and prized by others who believe that they can be like that too and will be like that too, one day, when it matters, in the midst of a situation like this where they wish they could speak up and then they will because they heard that song or watched that daily television program and knew that it was a prized thing to do was to speak up when one has a situation where one needs to speak up.

And so one wonders, what if this were a situation where he meant to speak up and wanted to speak up and needed to speak up and tell me that he truly did not want me here holding him while he slept but he simply did not have the strength to make the words come out of his throat this time, but he promised himself that he would in the time of the next because he really needed to get some good sleep and he really didn’t know how he felt about me and he really probably knows that he shouldn’t be here with me and that I am not right for him and he can sense that the future does not hold us together and we have no future together and he is wasting my time and my energy when he feels that I should be expressing with someone else while I am pressing my fingers and wrapping my arms and unloading my energy in the dark quiet night with my eyes dilated looking at someone else because he does not have the heart to tell me what he is really feeling even though he needs to, but just couldn’t tonight, so he will tell me tomorrow, after we have slept, or at least soon, because he really needs to and wants to but hasn’t had the words yet.

So I breathe softly on his neck and sigh and sigh and sigh because I know this is the end and the last time I will be able to hold him in my arms while he sleeps because even though he is here with me now I know that at some point he will have the strength to tell me he doesn’t want to be with me anymore or that he doesn’t feel he’s good enough for me or that he wants to see other people or that I’m just someone in the way of what he wants for his life and even though he cares dearly for me and has liked being held by me in the past there simply is never any more good times to be had because those times are over and he should have said something before when he needed to but he could not for fear and paranoia and he did truly want to give it a try, give us a try, for the sake of trying, and because he did think I was cool enough to try and he knew that I liked him more and more and probably more than I should and more than he did and so he wanted to be nice and allow me to spend time with him so that we could try and see where it goes but clearly it was not going anywhere and we were only pretending that we were in this together because while I was hoping and dreaming, he was really moping and scheming on ways to get out of it and would do so as soon as he could figure out a way to do so without it seeming like he came off like a jerk because he doesn’t want to be a jerk whether he feels he is being a jerk or not because he is simply being himself and honesty is the best policy and he needs to be honest with me and with everyone if he is to live his life and if he can’t be honest with himself than he can’t be honest with anyone and so that honesty will be translated into words that can be expressed tomorrow after this quiet dark night while I’m holding him while he sleeps while he thinks that I am lying here happily believing he is happy with me when he doesn’t have the ability to speak the truth and I don’t have the perceptive abilities to know what is before me, that within these arms and within my energy and next to my lips and face and chest and body is this body that will not be here tomorrow and not be here the next day and never be near me again even though he assuredly has told me this is coming with his nuance and vague references and secret plots and grandiose thoughts that I should get and should know but I simply don’t because I am a stupid romantic fool, stupid, romantic, vulnerable fool who trusts those who I should not trust, but I do and so here we are, once again, in the situation of my holding him, one more night, one last night, the night before he tells me the honest to goodness truth that he doesn’t wish to speak because he hopes I can perceive and the truth with which I simply do not or cannot hear or bear or conceive and so I do not and I continue to lie in this pose next to him believing in the lies and the poses that are so clearly there.

In this next instant I sigh once again. I can continue to hold him while he sleeps, I can press my fingers against him a little more, I can feel his body next to mine. For now. For tomorrow, it will be over. After he sleeps and then he awakes in the morning I will be awoken by him and his reality that he needs to speak and finally has found the courage to do so and he knows that this is for the best and we are better off seeing other people and this time was special but that there is going to be a better time and place for me because he knows that this is not right for whatever reason he has deemed it or feels it not to be right. And so I perceive that I will awake in the morning with the truth before me, the true feelings in his mind that he has never had the ability to speak before or that he did speak before but I just did not perceive correctly and so then in this next morning he will say the truth that I can hear and that he can say and then there will never be another night or morning like these and I will never see him again and I will never have his energy touching my energy and they will never fuse their energy together ever again and there will be this final pulse of energy that will then break, break, and then disappear as I leave or he leaves or we both leave and we go off to live our lives separately in a new world that is our individual world but not ours together because he has spoken his truth to me in the morning following the night that I held him while he slept.

He snores.

He has been snoring and continues to snore while I hold him while he sleeps. I see his lips slightly ajar with the sound of the snores coming in and out of his opened mouth.

I fear the morning’s reality, or perhaps the reality sooner if he should awake with his desire to tell me the truth that is clear to him but not to me.

I press my fingers against him and feel his energy again. What if all of these thoughts in my mind are just my thoughts and he does really want me to hold him, quietly, softly, tenderly, in the dark night, while he sleeps?