UNCONDITIONAL

Nightshade

"Its been eight weeks," he murmured. "For 6 weeks I've wanted you. I know how you move, and how the sunlight makes a shadow on the curve of your cheek, and the shape of your ear." He chucked harshly against his pillow as he turned to look at her. "I'm dying," he said. He dropped his fist against his chest with a dull thud. "Right here, you're killing me."

Except she had turned her face toward the darkening wall several minutes ago and was now breathing those shallow breathes of unfettered contentment. The last "me" seemed unnecessarily loud, but only drifted like a falling leaf, landing harmlessly between them.

How long had she been asleep? Had she heard anything? Was it unintentional, worse if it were intentional. He was, at last, undeniably in love. "Why?!?" His plaint was unheard, lost.

He did not love, what a dangerous concept. In fact, he had spent the majority of his existence lying to everyone he met. Lying in one way or another, large or small, happy, sad. He lied for love. Because he knew since he was very young, that when someone said those words, "I love you", even someone with the obligation to love, it was most likely fake. He knew love, true love, did not, would not and could not change.

Even if you wanted to hate them, wanted them to writhe in pain ,after the emotion of anger, the resentment, and hurt had past, the love would slowly bob to the surface, a cumbersome log in the river of life. No matter how much you wanted the hate to overwhelm the love, it was always there rebounding below, waiting on a song, a smell, a memory, even something as simple and inanimate as passing cloud or a thrown ball to jog to the surface. That's when it drops your heart into your gut, takes your breath and makes you reach for your phone wondering if their number is the same these many years later. The hate, anger whatever, no longer remains. Time rolls it down the river and turns it into experience and is forgotten for the most part.

So he lied, not because he wanted to, but because he thought that if you could make yourself exactly what the other person wanted, they would never leave. True love doesn't leave. So he lied, to everyone, they all loved whoever it was that he created for them to love. But he himself didn't chance love and he knew deep down that these people didn't love him. They loved this distorted fiction he painted for them.

Until all his lies converged, broke and were destroyed in front of her eyes. And he was left quite alone, stripped, exposed to all his marks. The love which was all he had wanted was immediately turned to hate and disgust. The things he feared the most. The things that had created the need for the masks and lies in the first place; outcast, unwanted, different, antisocial,  is what he was now.

He rolled over quietly and faced the opposing wall. It was a big bed, big enough that a sleeping 3 year old girl lay peacefully between them. To one an inconvenient shackle, to the other a last sinew of tenuous hope. But there she lay in her bright gown of illustrated Fairies. Loving them both with the same unconditional and childlike acceptance inherent in the unencumbered and blameless minds of youth.

He loved the adult beside her with the same all forgiving and unconditional love. Those of whom much grace is given much grace is required. His pillow was wet now as it had been for countless nights in succession; Sadness, followed by loss, piled upon helplessness. He wept savagely with only the moon and the ever watching fairies of a child's nightgown as witness.