I Do Love You

 We sit in the blackness of my darkened car, the last inches of sunset receding below the place where the trees join the freeway. I look at him as I pull the keys from the ignition, the engine rumbling to a halt. The emergency brake clicks on and I switch off my headlights, shutting out our last inches of light. His hair is outlined by the shivers of moonlight floating through the passenger window and it curls wildly around his ears. He's focused on something, god only knows what, as he continues to stare out the darkened window, reflecting his face back at us.

We were just kids, alone in a blackened vehicle as we flew through freeways with newfound freedom. We were just kids then, alone with lips flooded by stories we both craved to release. His words flew out faster than mine, I guess he'd had less time to work on the webbed walls we wore over our lips.

Last night I dreamed of you. In this dream we weren't parting and I wasn't leaving you behind. In this dream you loved me as I love you and in this dream you held my hand when I reached for yours.

I tell him of you as we sit there, my face turned away as "Futile Devices" plays on his ipod and he asks me if I want him to change it but I don't. The riffs and falls of I do love you replay in the darkness as I remember the way we walked forever, faces creased with laughter hysterical like falling in love.

"It's the loneliness, you know," he says, voice cutting through the darkness. Yeah. I do.

"It's the summer, the empiness in hot sheets. It's hard to fall asleep."

I can tell from the marks on his cheeks where tears have carved bloodlines that he has felt the hollowness that gnaws in the night.

 "It's the nights that are the hardest." His silence agrees with me. In the night I see the way your hair flopped over your eyes and you smiled at me under orange streetlights. At night I hear the way your laughter floated through the streets of this city like kites held down by the strings of our differing plans.