Long night to come

Another morning. Another dawn edging at the back of the night before. My beautiful boy, my love, in bed and stretching out into the empty space beside him. My absense, because this time, again, I will be awake with you. There is space of course in such long night to interrupt the conversation with the kind of intimacies that I have imagined. There is the potential to stop and kiss and touch and move this into something more ordinary. Instead we talk about books and film and the structure of things. You and I stick to the places where we speak with one voice. You are me for this one night and with this multiplying of my self I become less lonely.

This is not an end. At dawn we part and there is a time for us to stand and hug. I breathe in the tired and happy smell of your neck, your physical self. I am all longing, but now for once I recognise this for what it is. You are my friend and I love you. There is nothing better than this. So what we have will grow and change and become better each time we meet. I go back to my life just a little more enriched with each dawn we find together. You are my friend and I love you, a strong and enduring familial love. In this soon to be dawn we link fingers. You kiss my cheek. It has been another good night. There will be more good nights. I must remember this when I return to my habitual fretting. No love can be enough in itself. I need a multiplicity of loves and yours is particulary important to me. This love that shares my fascination for the written word. The love that reminds me how exciting it can be to read a thing and be moved by it. The kind of brother love that I have longed for all of my life.

Of course there is a little whisper of sexuality between us. In another life this might have ended differently, but here now I can still have you, but in this way, as someone in my life, embedded in it. A splinter that works its way into my skin and lodges there. I grow around you. You become a part of me. This is how it ends.