As if I had no choice in the matter.

Your hand closes around mine possessively. The electricity in the room is overwhelming. You reach over and pull off a rose petal. Softly, you run the swatch of velvet over my lips, my cheeks, my eyelids. My right hand still trapped by yours, my left hand on the dresser for balance. Balance that is quickly evaporating from my body. You let the rose petal drift to the floor and gently trace the same path across my face with your lips. You already know every curve, every plane. You've always known. Our bodies only met moments ago but our souls have been joined since the beginning of time.

You lead me to sit on the bed, kneel down, and remove my sandals. You run your thumb lightly across the tips of my toes and smile a lazy smile. We lay on the bed, facing each other. We're not touching with anything other than our eyes. We're not speaking with anything other than our eyes. For thirty minutes we lay like this; becoming comfortable in each other's company. Slowly, the words start to come. Your voice was made for the bedroom. Low and sexy, evoking images of days spent in bed; tangled sheets and bare feet. My fingers tracing the line of your jaw. Your fingers running up and down my arm, giving me goosebumps. These inadequate touches are all we will allow ourselves.

The day starts to fade into twilight. We don't turn on the lights; we just watch the sky darken through sheer curtains. That meeting of day and night, that time of transition, so appropriate for the moment.

It is time to go.

So hard to pull myself away but I have to do it. I sit up and start to rise from the bed. You stop me with your hand on mine. I feel a catch in my throat, a burning in my eyes. I refuse to look at you. You pull me towards you, enveloping me in your arms. We're kneeling on the bed; our bodies perfectly formed for each other, made for one another. My face is pressed into the curve of your neck; I'm inhaling you. You firmly tilt my face to yours. I cannot refuse you; I cannot deny myself. Our lips meet and it is like the crashing of the ocean. Clamorous and fervent. It is both the feeling of home and the feeling of stepping through the wardrobe into a new land full of dreams and possibilities. For a short moment we are the only two people in the world. Nothing exists outside that door. Yet, it cannot last. As much as it wrenches my heart to do so, I turn away. Break the contact.

It is time to go.

At the door I turn to look at you one last time. You don't know that my goodbye means forever. That this one perfect day will be all you ever know of me. That our one kiss will be the only one we ever share. You only know the feeling inside yourself is something that will not fade quickly. It will fade though. When I turn my back and walk away, eventually it will fade. I know this.

I sit in my car and cry. It was easier not knowing you existed.