December 22, 2001
Home at Last #2
So I will say what I was going to say last night but was not given the opportunity due to the hour of my return (quarter to two in the morning) and my unusually coherent parents:
O, glorious glorious raw lips.
I will also say that in the airport I alternated between wanting to throw up and wanting to jump up and down while waiting for his plane to taxi in. Bethany, his little sister, shared my sentiments though I am not sure to the same degree.
And then he rounded the corner. And his hair was a bit different, but his face was the same. And though he shook his dad's hand and hugged his sister before ever touching me, his eyes did not leave my face. A sleepy grin greeted me, and then his arms. I think perhaps he intended on kissing me, but didn't.
The car ride home from the airport was long and comical. I didn't know what to do with myself. I kept looking at him, squeezing his fingers tighter in mine, but at the same time feeling alltogether absurd. The comedy came in with the gradual closening of our bodies, our language shifting from staring out the window to leaning towards eachother, to him keeping me awake by rudely sticking his finger in my ear. Or yanking my hand out from under my chin and then grinning innocently.
He was home.
He only kissed me later. And then, almost as blessedly, other things.
Look! I can wickedly laugh again!
Later hordes of people came over and he regaled them with tales of the Air Force. I was content to watch him, to remember him.
I felt he would ignore me. But it would be alright.
But he didn't.
He finishes Willow downstairs with me, just the two of us. When Lindle and Scott and Bill and all the rest of the 'gang' show up, there is a maybe hour long interlude of shoe throwing and perverse conversation. I am falling asleep. I think he notices
We are all upstairs, various levels of coherence, watching Rush Hour, when Ryan beckons me to come and get a drink with him downstairs. We do.
And then we go in the living room and to sleep. Or, rather, he falls asleep, if fitfully, his head rising and falling with each of my breaths, the sounds of his one of the most comforting I have ever heard.
He is home.
And it is as though he never left. I told him so. We have picked up right where we left off, a brief moment of uncomfortable silence before our laughter breaks it. I don't think I can let him leave again.
There is no hour long enough. I am already feeling the pain of his departure, and he has only just arrived.
I can only hope that one day, he will stay.
He is my home.
astera at divine