Seven days dreaming of you. I kept looking forward - falling back into your hypnotic gaze. Your steady eyes filled with want. Your intent - desire spilling from your every touch.
Within moments of meeting you, you caught my full attention and held me captive for the night. One night. A night crowd, safety in numbers. Surrounded. We the scene. They took in our light basked in our glow.
Sideways glances drank us in. The sight of that moment. That mystical space when love ignites between two and suddenly it feels as if there is only one. Drinks it in, lap it up. The craving so great the realization rare.
It's night, the music loud - bar crowded. Through the heavy pulse, I could hear your stillness of hope calling me through. The saying goes "love at first sight." I always wondered the truth of that phrase, until now.
It was at first glance, that millisecond of a glimmer, shimmering in your eyes. My soul felt the beauty of you, the truth of you, the love that is you. The palpable intensity of us.
Funny your Phrase, "we should take a break" we had only just met. Where does love go when it takes a break? Where does love go when it finds itself where it should not be?
Seven days counted, each one wishing time to move faster. To see you again. To feel you again. To love you again. Friday came and I went to you as you requested.
My eyes fumble through lingering bodies. I look up. Balconied you waited. My heart could break from the beauty of you. The unknown world of you. The secret complexity of you. Breath away, look away, regain composure.
I wanted to fall into you and never separate. But the heart already measured the distance. We were from two different worlds. Crossing cultures that did not mix well. The heart would know no such boundaries. But the head and world are full of boarders.
Unfriendly crossings where the other is a stranger in a strange land. Ending before beginning. Arrested by the uncertainty of differences. You can never go back.
We crossed over anyway. Friday at 8:40. Me late. You waiting. I didn't think you would show. The distance was greater for you. I delayed hoping you were just a one night thing an anomaly of love. I was wrong.
My questions spilled tears from your eyes. "We should take a break. What do you want? So many questions from the questioning man." The heaviness of your home weighed in. Retreat.
Your conflicted heart hidden but visible. Culturally unaccepted the romantic notion of love between two men. Hesitantly you spoke your truth, "I will never be able to be free, I wish you were Lebanese." I wished he was not.
This is a zoom in on my painting Fight, which is a reimagining of William Bouguereau’s, Dante and Virgil, 1850.
The passion between Dante and Virgil feels apropos to accompany this word work.