Pillow Talk

Sunday afternoon. Raining outside. Gentle thoughts, as soft and warm as the down comforter on our bed.

Pillow talk.

"You know, I was thinking..."

"Bout what?" Roxanne whispered, near a doze.

Feeling the poetic muse, I practiced the first few words through the privacy of my own mind, to see how they would sound -- then believing they would end up where I wanted them to go, and say what I wanted them to say, I spoke aloud, explaining from the beginning.

"Well. I was thinking. If I had not met you. If I had met someone else. Fallen in love. Was spending my life with someone else. There'd be deep feelings. Passion. Excitement. All those things. I'm not one to abide boredom for long. But it's just..."

I hesitated, long enough to make sure I really meant what I was going to say, and could accurately say what I was really meaning.

"Just what?" she asked, more interested now. Rightfully so.

"It just that...well, it would never feel complete. I would sense, the whole of my life spent loving someone else, that...that YOU were out there. Somewhere. Out there," I said, motioning toward the window, "with the whole thing. The real thing."

"And somehow," I continued, "I think I would have known I was missing it. Even if I didn't know you, exactly, I would have known...hm... I would have known your promises. I would have sensed what could be. I would have known I was missing out."

"Yes," she replied. "It's lucky we met."

That seemed to dash my poetic ponderings. They deserved better treatment. I'd been trying to say so much more than that. I went up on one arm then, leaning my head upon my palm to look at her as I asked. "You think luck had anything to do with it?"

"No." she replied, quickly. "God threw you into my path."

I guess that was some little bit better, at least. "Yeah," I nodded, "both of us. Like a pile of straw thrown into the path of a hurricane."

A pause as she reflected. Then, "No. More like a cinderblock chunked under the wheels of a speeding sportscar."

My head crashed down onto the pillow, and I groaned. "Humph. I might argue with your choice of simile, except for one thing," I said dramatically.

"You're hungry," she completed the thought for me.

See? Now that's what I'm talking about. To be known so well by someone who loves me so much.

Paradise on Earth, man.