For Geoff, who will never read this
Sometimes I think of passion as something foreign to me. An inexplicable emotion that somehow motivates the sufferers to heedless acts of impetuousness that I can never understand, only shoulder-pat and there-there in the aftermath.
But then I remember you.
I remember my first sight of you on that porch. The lanky frame. Dark hair and eyes such a contrast to your pale skin. The intelligence in your eyes. The deep voice behind me, breath from your laughter on my neck. The body pressed against mine on that couch. I remember you.
I spent the night with you. The first time (last time) I'd ever done anything so idiotic, so impetuous. The passion before sleep, the comfort during. You held me in your arms all night, and I woke to see the photo on the nightstand. Your fiancee.
The hospital came a few days later, and somehow we were part of each other right then. Secrets shared so quickly between us -- secrets that had been shared so few times before, and only then hesitantly. Trust between us, forged in fire and suicide.
No more overt passion after the hospital (that passion for you a symptom of the turbulence you had been feeling at the very moment our lives intersected). And yet... I shared your bed. I slept deeply, curled into your body -- a peace I've never felt in sleep with anyone else. I shared your bed, if not your body, with that framed photo staring down at me. At me! Me, high judge and jury of infidelity. I should have cared.
I drove you to your wedding. I shared a hotel room with you the night before. And for the first time, we slept separately. It was the only time I ever slept fitfully (with you but not, the empty space between the beds a wide gulf between us). I watched you marry her on the cliffs of Lake Tahoe. I watched, and I was glad. So fiercely glad for you, and for her.
I never saw you again after that day. The unspoken agreement between us, two lovers that would never be.
For 14 years I have had only one thing of you besides my memories -- a bottle of cheap wine, notable only because your image (and hers, mustn't forget hers) is part of the label. The only image I have of you, my unspoken (never spoken) love.
And when I feel empty, like passion is something for others but not for me, I stare at your image on that bottle. To remind myself of passion. Passion I felt and lived. Passion remembered always.
Thank you. Forever.
Note that I rarely post here anymore. You can find me on LiveJournal instead. 
