Starwaves

I remember the grey light. I pulled her close to me in the aftermath of our lovemaking. It was then that I told her I was leaving, not yet knowing I was wrong. Our lives were not yet to diverge.

She cried.

Her face pressed against my shoulder, I felt her sobs. Her wet tears coursed across my skin.

I had broken my promise that I would never make her cry. I have failed many times, yet she never blames me. She said she never cried. Her emotions have been so buried beneath years of abuse and neglect that she had forgotten them. I had awoken in her the emotions she was never otherwise allowed to feel.

I made her remember that she was alive, and she wept for how much she loves me.

She still does. She doesn't know about Starwaves. I never told her how I went home that night from the hotels, sleepless. The song waited for me, and when the music reached its crescendo, I pressed my fists against my closed eyes screaming silently as tears coursed freely past all the dams I had built to hold them back.