MY SHELTER
a short story about the angel i never deserved
You’re far away right now - I can’t see you or hear you, but I can feel you. I imagine your scent again and how each time I felt the touch of your fingertips I was taken to where things are simple, a place where a one-track mind was all that’s needed and I didn’t have many concerns. I feel peace now and then rather than never at all like it’s always been. You made me dinner by the ocean and we both felt the fire everywhere and it was warm and kind, dancing everywhere the light had abandoned.
You’re far away right now…and I don’t know how many more times I can tell you I’m sorry before the sheer volume makes it insincere - to where you can’t even hear it anymore. I just want to run my hand through your hair in apology and watch you shut your eyes when my lips and the top of your head connect and I recall when I felt them close just beneath me and you leaned in, really leaned in - it was then that I knew that you may actually feel safe in my arms and perhaps I’m not all bad. Your glowing smile. The softest eyes God could make. To where I know with certainty that he indeed grew tired once more than was written and needed rest after you came to be; the only paradise this world has left and maybe even ever had.
You’re far away right now, my blood is raw so my chest draws another deep breath and with it I thank all creation that I was born me for the very first time and I know a choir of otherworld-lies rejoice too and sing songs I’ll never get to hear, but all the while knowing that somehow someone somewhere is rooting for me. I may have lived life thus far first denying then resenting my protagonist-ship in this rather minor part of a very small story along the tiniest corner of the universe; but it meant one day you would come along and that’s everything to me.
You’re far away right now, but when you’re near, the man that made me in all his rage that always stood over me, having flooded me with endless memories of how it was so clear that he wished I’d never been…he starts to fade away. I’ll give you everything that ever was or would be mine for nothing, I just hope you’ll always want to be my shelter.