THESE FEELINGS CAN NEVER GO AWAY
By Amy L. Melendez
The feelings I have for him. The way I think of him, the way I remember him, his soft sweet voice, that calls for me in the night. Those wonderful large sad eyes of his and the way they filled with tears when I was crying into his hands begging him not let me go again. The way his body felt against mines, the last time we laid down together, when his heart was touching my heart. Still hear it pounding, still can hear him say my name…over and over and over again. Or was it me…saying his name over and over and over again. These feelings of passion and want, so much want that I can’t bear. It feels like I want to “catch up” with the years that have past and separated us through circumstances.
Can this be what has made all the great star-crossed lovers stories of the past famous? The lovers that never got it quite right and were destined to be torn apart and separated.
Lovers like Romeo and Juliet, Heathcliff and Catherine, Yuri Zchivago and Lara? I’d like to think so; I’d like to glorify this “love” as something like that. But this is neither a movie nor a sad song. This is a crime to my heart…It’s a wound that does not go away. It sits in my heart and stays with me day and night.
Soulmates I have been told. What a laugh….soulmates? What am I learning now from this beautiful man….did I kill him in another lifetime? Were we gladiators fighting in a coliseum in Rome centuries ago and as he lay down I pierced his heart with my sword? Did I hold him captive in some dungeon every night and tortured him? Did I love him and leave him stranded somewhere with his heart pounding waiting for me to return? Did I run away and never come back into his arms again? Was that how it started?
Must have been a pain beyond your wildest imagination because surely now, I feel the consequences and the anguish returned to me. I have not stopped crying since I found him, I have not thought one second of a way to get him to “Come back to me”, his LOVE, the one he wanted before, the girl he longed for. I think I love him too much, if one can love someone that much. Maybe he is weak; maybe it’s too soon for him. All the excuses, and still, I lie alone in my bed, thinking of HIM and what went wrong…Fate, Destiny, Karma, Circumstances…all words.
The story starts out innocently enough…July 13, 1977
A long time ago he felt this way about me. I was too young to know. Only a child myself, in many ways, just beginning to learn about the power that every young woman knows she has inside of her as she is turning into a woman. The sexual power a young beautiful girl has at the peak of her teen-age years can be very strong, especially to a young teen-age boy who was only too eager to be around her and love her.
He just happened to be there in July 1977 in a small deli near one of the favorite hang outs of all young people near the beach in Brooklyn, NY, I met him while my Cousin and I were buying our snacks in the morning and I heard her talking to someone at the counter as I bought my sweet peaches from the produce section. I heard her saying hello and that was when I heard a voice that must sound like what angel sounds when they talk.
At that time in my life, I took him for granted, another one of my sweet boyfriends who were in abundance in those early summers of my life in Brooklyn. A very handsome, strong, tall and sexy boy that I thought was a bit awkward but sweet, quiet but with a gentleness that you could also find in a good friend as well. My cousin introduced us as we walked together along the boardwalk. The same boardwalk that 33 years later, we would both find ourselves walking across, in a different season. This time there would be no bathing suits or shorts, no sunshine, no working on our tans and no anticipation for a “date” later on and no sitting by the water. This time, it would be cold and bitter but with a beautiful full moon out in the dark sky looking down on two beautiful sweet lovers of the past that Should Have Been.
