Author's Warning: Themes of incestuous emotions
Skin
That is what I remember most about you.
It is not your voice, nor your music, nor the image of your face that lingers in my memory. No, rather, it is the memory of the warmth of you—the sense of warmth and safety being stronger than being able to physically feel you as you held me. The cold of the winter nights would always be at my back, but the chill would melt away when you gathered me in your arms to keep me warm, for that was the only warmth we really had—each other. I can remember your scent, too—sweet yet strong, not overpowering and yet all I could think of when it filled my nose. It was the smell of outside, of ancient wisdom of the art we both loved so much—wisdom I longed to someday know—it was the smell of the earth.
I remember how, on summer days when we would play together by the sea, how the water would splash up and then cling to you, the droplets turned to diamond adornments by the sun, the stings of the precious jewels against your fair flesh the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. The jewels would vanish with the setting sun, and the moon would rise and reveal to me that you were a spirit of the moon itself, so silver was your complexion made in the faint glow of the night. I remember lying next to you in the night, nestled against you, my face buried in your hair, and I would claim—and, at the time, I thought—that I was doing so because I was cold. Indeed, how could I have known the things I was feeling back then? I did not even know such feelings existed!
Yet I know of these feelings now, of course, and, though one would think shame would come with such emotions, I do not feel it. I have lain awake in bed many nights, my eyes closed tight, trying to remember the feeling of you against me, knowing now what I desired back then but could not understand. I yearn to be with you, to have what I know now I never can. My heart is scratched raw by knowing it will never be, for obvious reasons. My body itself is thrown into physical pain, so great are the longings of my heart, and there have been times when my longings become so great that I cry.
I think when I first began to get hints in the back of my mind that I was with a man who was not who he said he was happened when he reached for my hand. His touch was not yours—my heart sank at the feeling. I had expected the warmth I remembered so well to wash over me, for my insides to melt in a puddle at finally feeling what I had been yearning for all those years. Of course, I yearned for much, much more than merely holding hands, but it would have been a start. Yet it was not your touch, your hand, not even a memory of it, and I think that is when the façade of the Angel of Music began to dissolve for me, Papa.