Nocturne

I watch him sleeping, his eyelashes casting dark circles on the alabaster skin of his cheeks.  He's so beautiful like this, when he's oblivious to the world and lost in the dreams of his own creation, untouched by the bitterness that haunts his waking hours.  Looking at him when he's asleep you could believe that he's innocent.  That he's never been cruel and hateful and spiteful, tormenting others until they weep tears of blood.  That he's never pointed a wand at someone and whispered the curse; those fateful words that will end a life forever in the blink of an eye.  That he's never lived for the sole purpose of destroying the frail happiness that others have worked so hard to achieve...looking at him sleep you would think that he's an angel.  An angel of light come to take all of your pain away.  When in reality nothing could be further from the truth.

He hurts me. Every time we touch, every time we kiss, he hurts me.  Because when we're that close he's so tender and loving that it makes me want to melt into him, crawl inside of his very soul so that we can merge into a single being and no one will know where the one ends and the other begins, utterly indistinguishable from each other.  But it's all over so fast.  Because then he turns away and when I look back into his silver eyes they're closed, his soul hidden away in some locked chamber that I don't hold the key to.  And it breaks my heart, that one second we can be so close and the next we're worlds apart.  It hurts.  Like a shard of glass lodged deep inside my heart, threatening to tear it open and spill its blood onto his hands.

But when he's asleep...then he's mine.

Then I can hold him and caress him without fearing that he'll draw away, reject my touch.  I can run my fingers over that beautiful white skin and press my lips against it without feeling him retreat even as he's kissing me back, sending rivulets of hurt through me, Hurts that cut through to my very soul.  It is a pain like no other, to feel the one you love shrink away from you.  That's why I treasure our nights together so very much; when he sleeps he doesn't keep me out; he curls up into the curve of my body, pressing his head against my chest. And I wrap my arms around him, trying to warm his cold skin, wishing with every fiber of my being that it was like this all the time.  That it was always this tender, this intimate.  But in the end he always wakes up.

And then the void, the uncrossable chasm between us is torn open once again and I'm forced to wonder if he really loves me as much as I love him.

Except that sometimes...

Sometimes when he wakes up he doesn't pull away.  Sometimes he looks at me with those beautiful gray eyes and an emotion swims slowly up out of their mysterious depths, softening them as they meet my green gaze and his lips curve up in a gentle smile.  And when I kiss him he kisses me back wholeheartedly, giving me every shred of his heart and soul, holding nothing back.  And then we cling to each other in the soft darkness of the night, merging into one, loving each other with all we are.

And then I think that there's hope.