Never Goodbye

Coming out of the building, my chlorine soaked hair is a tangled mess, but at least it's not dripping. The cold wind blows past me as I see her resting against the hood of her car, head down, hands shoved deep in her pockets. I throw my things in the car, and walk over to her slowly. She pulls me into a strong embrace as soon as I'm in her arms reach- knocking the wind out of me and stealing my warmth. Burying her face in my neck and hair, she pulls me tighter. She inhales me hair and lets out a shaky exhale with the smell of my skin. My hair. Me. I know that it pulls on the strings wrapped around her heart that is tied to my finger. She cups my face and kisses every inch of my face, that leaves my face feel like it's been graced with butterfly wings. She says that she's missed me and I stand there, in the cold, with my hands locked behind her back. I kiss her shoulder. My head rests on her chest and I can feel her heart beat inside my body; pounding and screaming for me to hold her tighter. I stop breathing so I can smell her skin, hear her heartbeat and feel the hands, that have shown me the way so many times, resting on my lower back. I stand on the tips of my toes and kiss her- allowing it to blow me away. I bring my arms up- sandwiching them between our bodies, hoping to warm them up.  She kisses my forehead, letting her lips linger on my wet hair, and my heart breaks with the need to fall asleep in her arms like this. She tells me she loves me, and the words, and the kisses, fall from her silky lips like pouring rain. This is the place we had our first kiss- funny how memories seem to fall in the same places. Again, she pulls me, needfully, against her. She holds me, and looks at me, and loves me. I teasingly ask her what she's done wrong; why she's being so loving. Her mood gets serious and I can feel it without looking at her, as she says she's trying to make up for the past week. For all my tears. For all the blood I've had to bleed trying to get the pain out. Her eyes beg me to stay, while her mouth only asks. Her eyes beg me to get in the car with her, and to go home with her. An unfamiliar home to me, but they beg me just the same. Her mouth jokes that I should just say I'm staying at a friends and go home with her instead. It will be my home with her soon- in a year. Her mouth laughs at her request, but her eyes silently cry in need. We know I have to go to my own home- the unforgiving place where she hasn't been able to exist for a year now because it's a 'dirty perversion' for two girls to love each other. We hold on to each other for a bit longer, saving all this love between us for the road. For the trip. For the long months where days pass before we hear each others voices through the static of cell phones with low service. A kiss for every kiss we'll want to give each other for all the good things that happen that we won't be able to celebrate together. A smile for the holidays. An 'I love you' for the lonely nights that always creep up on us when we need them the least and can't escape the pain of this separation. Goodbye is so hard to say, and even harder to hear. But we say it pretending like we will see each other again very soon, talk to each other again very soon. I'll see her in my dreams, and she'll see me in hers. We won't say goodbye in them- just hold each other tight while we can before the day comes to steal us away. It's hard to love like this, but we have a strong love that's lasted through so much. Cheating, lying, separation, money, fights. It's stood through every trial a relationship can stand, and it's still there. So as her fingers slip from out of mine, we know that it's not really goodbye- it's more of a 'I miss you already'. And I do.1