After the Loving you always asked me to hold you while you were still coming down. I held you inside my body, in my heart, and in my dreams. Nothing was ever more real. Your scent was my breath as my fingers wove paths through the curls of your chest and I held your heart in my trusting hand. It wasn’t the betrayal. Though, knowing your heart had found other hands was pain enough to bear, I could have survived. It was the cold, the silence, and the purposeful looking away; pretending we never were. You said you were my friend. A friend would have warned me. A friend would have stayed to see me through the pain. A friend would have felt the sharp of my heart breaking. A friend would have held me while I was still coming down. Shirley Alexander © 2009
