Imaginings: Three Words and a Kiss

I'm in the process of editing a novel, that has taken me way too long to finish. In the meantime, I have put together a collection of my short stories, submitted to magazines and publishing houses, for a book. This is an except from that book, called the BETWEEN. I hope you will enjoy it.

Three Words and a Kiss

“I love you,” he said holding me in his strong arms.

It was in his eyes, his smile, Love was his very essence, yet, all his love frightened me.

Those three words were full of adoring and worship. The way he freely offered them scared this discarded heart of mine.

I stared into his brown eyes, mute; watching his disappointed gaze, when I didn’t respond in kind.

This burden weighted heavy on me, remembering how he had showered those words on me like a bouquet of flowers, floated them around like snowflakes in autumn. Nevertheless, they were so foreign to my ears they hurt.

What did I know of words, when all I understood, breath were actions?

A slap or a punch, these were my learning tools for loves rules. Yet, all he offered to me are his words!

Soft words whispered in the afterglow of bliss, when I was accustom to shouts and fists.

Simple words repeated daily while in his embrace, were like a mantra to tame this wild beast.

He said three words so pure; they were openly innocent, simple words that seeped into my consciousness. Like slow thick molasses over pancakes, filling the small cracks of my mind, my essence.

They followed me around like phantoms in the day, haunting; becoming tangible creatures in the night, daunting. These words were the vicious retrovirus slowly mending this broken heart of mine.

This loving man, not with brute or might, but with simple words reached me in the darkness that was once my heart.

Love became the light inside the stillness of me. He had reached for me inside the storm of my past, waited patiently, with out-stretched hand, for my healing.

Now it was time I reached back.

Free flowing tears fell from my brown eyes when I whispered the three simple words he had waited so long to hear.

“I love you too.”

This man, so full of words, said nothing.

He stared into my eyes and smiled, while shedding a tear, he kissed me.