Remember Me

There are tears trapped somewhere within her, forcing their way to the surface. She locks eyes with him, and the pure honesty in his gaze fissures her.
He knows nothing about her. But she unravels in front of him like a thread fraying loose on a rope, stretched to all its capacity until it snaps.
She watches him quietly as he sleeps, taking in every aspect and dimension of his face, the way his skin hollows around his collarbones. She maps his face line by line.

Remember. Remember it all.

She dissolves for him, and he sees her in a way no one has ever seen her. He sees the effort, the essence, the sheer strength of her facade, and he sees each silver bright scar that escape the eyes of others.
In watching her fall apart, he knows what holds her together.

Somehow with him, she is not so angry. Not so fearful. Safe. Complete.
She matches her breath to his, inhale with him, exhale with him, the thud of his heartbeat against her ear. His arms thrown heavily around her, anchoring her. One breath, two breaths. A third, a fourth, a fifth. And that is all it takes to soothe her senseless fear.

This is love and all she knows of it - sometimes it hurts, and sometimes it is wonderful, and sometimes it is strange and mostly it is beyond understanding and overwhelming.
This is the only way she knows how to love - laughing at his silly jokes about her, bringing him ridiculous amounts of food and dessert, wrapping herself over his body when he's asleep, resting her head on his shoulder. Giving him all of herself.

When she looks at her reflection in the mirror and she can see, in her eyes, that part of her which is breaking, breaking, forever breaking. She wishes she could magically heal herself, magically erase his existence. And yet. Keep him with her. Forever.
If her leaving is the only way he will find happiness, she will gladly oblige. Nothing else matters, except his happiness.
If anything happened to him, she wouldn't survive it.

And just for an instant, at some point of his life in the future, he will remember this time, remember her as she is.
But either way.
He must know and remember forever. That she loved him. For however brief, or however long a time. He was stamped indelibly onto her heart. That his name beat in her blood. That she was wholly and irrevocably his. That she, as she is now, is his.

I will never let anyone touch me the way you do.