First Love

She was my first and foolish love. In the half-light of the 　　morning I lay awake waiting for her quiet, almost silent feet to come down the hallway, for her scent—a curious mixture of honey and peach—to part the thick air outside my room filled with the lonely smells of young men living away from home. She would pause outside my door for a moment to put on her slippers before climbing the two steps down into the kitchen, and my foolish imagination would swell with the shadowy silhouette of her lingering by my door, a phantom more real than anything I could have seen with my open eyes. Every morning, every morning, I waited like that, for the circles of azure and gold and auburn to gather like clouds inside my closed eyelids as I felt her steps down the hallway over my body, and for the clouds to burst suddenly and reveal her large and limpid eyes framed with demure lashes, the ghost of a smile on her bud-like lips. Stretching out my arms toward the naked light bulb, my eyes still closed, I would cry out love and agony, muted by my blanket—I love you more than you will ever know, your image will be a fever that will last a lifetime in my brain, your name a poem heard deep, deep inside my ears, and I will tremble with tenderness and desire fro you at a mere imagined touch of your hand, always.