agape: my love is

My love is stolen kisses in the dark, away from prying eyes, just barely hidden beneath judgmental murmurs, whispers, rumors of what had been or what was or what was really going on behind closed doors, discreet. My love is a name held like a prayer, like a godsend, clutched between my fingers like the fleeting thought that maybe this is truly the last time we could ever be like this, tangled with my worries and hopes filling the crevices between our warm bodies, synchronizing and filling each other perfectly with my fingers melting into the gaps between his. My love is forbidden trysts across empty avenues and blinking streetlamps, silent promises of another, a next, an always, the stray cat you loved enough to hide in your closet and feed slipped scraps to in spite of the danger of being caught and tossed out. My love mewls and mewls and mewls and mewls, and it is all I can do to keep it muffled under wraps.

My love is a countdown of the days until disaster.

My love is writhing and naked and blinking in the full light of day, weak against barrages of accusations and shaken heads, pointed fingers and misinterpreted shrugs of denial. My love, I know, is on the surface the textbook definition of a superior taking advantage of his subordinate, the conniving veteran and the innocent youth bridging inappropriately between thirteen years of experience, of emotional hardship and development, through things that should have never been said and fingertips that should have never met and lips that should have never, under any circumstances, molded and softened against each other so perfectly that first night in the dark, away from prying eyes, beneath the judgment that had already begun to bud. My love is wrong, it is said. My love is not what I think it is, what he thinks it is, what anyone believes it be or will be or had been -- because it does not exist. My love is false, a sexual ploy between two unequally vulnerable individuals. My love, I am told, is not unconditional.

My love asks me sometimes if I have already collared him with a forever beneath the fire of his skin. I nod, always.