Teach Me How To Love You

I don't know how to love you – this kind of love, anyway. I've always loved you in the low cal, non-fat, sugar free kind of way of a friend, but I don't know how to love you like this. I'm the one who took you to bed, and I don't know how to love you like this. I've seen all of the above before, the shoulders and the chest and the arms, but I don't know how to touch you, and the way you touch me makes me die a little on the inside because you can never take it back.

You're going to have to show me how.

I know all the biology. I know all the things that should go right, all the things that could go wrong. I understand the moral and ethical edge I'm standing on as your fingers just brush the hem of my shirt, asking, not telling me to take it off. You want to do that. You want to do everything, I think, everything you've never done before. You want to know the feel of the small of my back where my spine dips in, the slightly irritated skin under the band of my bra. You want to know what it's like to kiss this girl rather than to let her kiss you, this girl you don't know, only you do, because you know me. It's me, and that makes it better, but it also makes it worse.

You're going to have to lead me there, to wherever we're going.

I don't know how we got here. We're doctors, we know better than to cause harm – it has to be harm when my lungs are on fire, and my heart is beating so hard against yours I think they're going to give out at the same second. It has to be harm when my muscles ache and cramp, searching for something they can't find without you. I never thought I needed to find it before. I never thought I wanted it before. I have fasted, and I have waited, and now I'm starving, and now I'm impatient. Don't expect better from me. Don't expect me to make it last forever, to make it guilt-free, to make it low cal again. All I can do is love you, all the lines of your body and your face.

You're going to have to teach me how.

I know everything there is to know about you, but there are things even I couldn't imagine. I couldn't have imagined my hand struggling on the sheet, your hand knotting with it, stilling me, holding me close at the end of our arms. We don't even kiss cheeks on birthdays, so even though I know how your mouth responds to every emotion and how you kiss everyone other girl but me, I couldn't have imagined this. You make me bold. You make me beautiful.

We're in a hotel room a million miles away, but you take me home.

So you're going to have to teach me how not to love you, for when I've learned how to love you, because this is deep and rich and lovely and guilty, this kind of love, and all I can do is love you, all the time that we've had, all the time we have left.

Fin.