It is is the greatest pain in the world.

Electricity flows between the two of us as we lay there, side by side but no longer skin to skin.

A wetness falls down my cheek and I think back to a time long before now, the first time, when I’d laid here in the same spot. A different kind of electric power had been shared between us. I longed then to reach out, touch him, feel him there and know that I wasn’t alone but I hadn’t been sure I was allowed. He wasn’t mine yet. I felt excitement and wonder at his warm body radiating off a heat that meant he was yearning for my touch also. There was an innocent intensity as our hands lightly brushed against the others, unsure but still desperate.

Now I lay here tonight, many nights after that first. I am still unsure but now instead of excitement there is bitterness and instead of warmth there is a coldness coming from his weary frame. He holds our blankets close to him like a shield and yet all I want to do is reach out and feel him and have him feel me back. I want to know that this could all disappear if we both want it to. That all the broken hearts and bitter words can be mended and erased if only he could feel my touch again. If only he could feel the love I have for him that is buried somewhere deep inside still. I want his body to warm me, sooth me and tell me it will all be all right again. If only.

It is an impossible dream though in the darkness of the home we share. The months that have separated us have also brought a bitter anguish that neither of us have invited and yet it has grown before our eyes. We are unable to stop it and have done little to try. Now anger slides easily from him to me because of it. I also feel anger at the pain that lay between us, and at him, because they are both keeping us at a distance that is impossible for either of us to cross. Too many hurt words have been passed between our stubborn tongues and I’m not even sure why anymore.

The bed that had once held our love and laughter as we’d rolled back and forth, planning a future we had no control over now feels like a prison I have no escape from. In the silent darkness my foot brushes his, merely by accident, and I feel him lurch away and my heart aches at the rejection of it. We share this very same moment night after night and yet both of us are cowards, unable to gather the courage to say the right words and put an end to our pointless hatred.

So for this moment, in this night, I wipe the wetness from my face and pull the blankets a little tighter. “Hold me! Love me!! Fill me in only the way you can!” I think, but really want to scream as I rub my feet together, avoiding the touch of his again. There, of course, is no response in the emptiness of our silent room. We have more in common tonight than we will ever admit and it leaves me to fall into a restless sleep with miles of empty space stretched between our wide-awake, ever beating, breaking hearts.

As we sleep, the greatest pain in the world continues to fill the spaces in between the cracks we’ve foolishly let grow.