Adapted from tweets between @Musketeer_Athos and @Exquisite_Wren 22nd August 2014

I sit at the edge of the bed running my fingers through my hair and sigh as I look across the open arms of an ocean of a bed that separates us. She’s there, next to me yet so far away. I lower my head and sigh again. Even the loneliness of shadows refuse to conceal the ripples between us, the sadness of the tide keeping our limbs, caress and hearts from each other’s reach. Touch we both long for, though the journey seems far and wide as she smoothes her hand gently across to mine in need of my affection, warmth and embrace. My love…she implores.

 I look over with my heavy lidded eyes trying to express words and feelings that are submerged and even drowning in a cataclysm of emotional foreboding. She looks so frail, so delicate. My heart wants to burst for the want of her as I take the proffered hand and rub my thumb across those slender lines. 

“I must get up and go to the garrison.” 

Her desolate eyes meet the grievance of mine as she slowly leans forward to pull the sheet from the tucked confines of our made bed, the distance between the gentle caress of our hands…now gone with a sigh of her own.  She rolls from the coldness of these sheets with her bare form and gently slides the fabric around her lines, shielding her heartache is what I will find as she stands concealed on her side of the bed. She then moves around towards me with the gentle lift of her head. Her features pained, her delicate cheeks stained with what was before as her feet reach mine and eye my boots that rest on the floor.

 “Let me help you dress” 

 She sweeps a hand that pressed against the covering sheet. 

“Sit back on the bed while I help you with your boots. It’s the least I can do.”

  She lays a gentle had to my cheek, our hearts so far apart, yet within inches of each other’s embrace. She restricts this distance that keep us at a distant mark.

 I lower my melancholy eyes to watch every minute detail and movement securing them in my mind to treasure these moments as if they were my last on earth. My hand yearns to reach out to touch and caress you but my inner darkness forbids all significant signs of affection. Yet within me beats the heart of man desperate to take her within my protective arms and crush down the most passionate of loving embraces….yet I sit motionless….just watching…just yearning …just falling apart, hidden from her eyes.

 With weary wings, her tender fingers clasp at the rim of my leather boots, oblivious to where my eyes layer down upon her features.  My eyes peel back the monochrome of the woman that bends down to dress me in my soldier’s detail. Her attempt at scooping up the shattered pieces of her soul, our love, my love and what was the passion that we knew.

  I stand before her, a mighty figure of leather shod masculinity oozing earthly testosterone, an Adonis of a true fighting man, yet crushed by the sheet wrapped siren before me and hungering for your love.

  “I must go”

 My eyes plead for understanding. 

She trembles afresh at the sight before her, longing to feel replete, standing now at the window of my beseeching wearing her own armour, though her eyes grant grace when she nods and leans forward bestowing a gentle kiss to my cheek.

 I nod a curt thank you, forcing a polite smile to brave itself across my face, turns and strides out the room without looking back. 

Purpose driven I can only focus on the day ahead.