One thousand days.

We had shared our final night together on the futon in the parlour. By then, you were uncomfortable about being in what was our bed, and somehow being in the main room helped you be at ease. We spent the previous night there also, although for several nights before that, we were apart. It felt strange, adjusting to the growing distances and your changing energy, but it was a confusing time for us both, and we were still doing our best to remain as patient and as elegant with one another as possible. You really tried hard, and I know that was a struggle for an Aries like you.

You were not my first love, and you were not my longest love, but you were my most crippling love. Even though you languished at my boots and submitted to my whip's kisses, yielded your generous and curvaceous bottom to my punishments and lovingly submitted your body to my shadowy hungers, it was to you that I freely and willingly gave the last of my innocence. I gave too much of myself; that was part of the problem that I developed later, after you were gone, after I was left with your possessions and your abandoned animals.

Then as now, they remind me of you, and they remain cared for with the love you knew I would give to them.

I gave too much of myself because I surrendered. I was wrong to. In you, I thought I had found everything I hoped for and desired in a woman, a lover, a partner. I neglected to look past your delicious faerie glamour (a mistake I had made before), or least past it enough to see those nuances of you that you kept under lock and key. I thought I loved your angst, your rage, your moments of sullen indulgence with your art, your offerings of puja, that wicked nighthag's laugh of yours which I still miss.

But, in the end, you were simply counting coup, weren't you? Despite all your efforts and beauty in healing arts and work, there always would be that cast-iron nugget in your spirit. It's simply a matter of time before your lovers have earned enough demerit points before you not only leave them, but abandon them, and in your zeal for personal re-incarnation, you also leave behind all that you were with them. Now I understand why, when we were together, you never discussed your past partners in depth and we never heard from them in any social, friendly way.

Alright... that's not true. After you left, and after you left so many of your goods for me to sort through or dispose of, I found the holiday cards and a letter or two. I was not, I learned, the first one whom you had left so 'cleanly,' and whom you had hurt so deeply with the sudden abandonment of your entire self. I grasped your modus operandi, and the awareness helped me heal.

And yet, like a moth (...or a dragonfly?) to a flame, something about you kept me from entirely forgetting you. In a spite, you even had sex with the one man on this earth whom I truly loathe, and a man who has been accused of child sexual assault no less and who has harmed so many spirits of so many people whom we love... and yet I still longed for you. Why?

It's true: more often than not, sex with you was fabulous. We were sensual lions, you and I, and I treasured all the build-up and all the epilogues to our heat. I miss the way you used my shaft and cockhead to jill yourself. I miss the way you moved and begged as I took you in your fabulous ass. I miss our daydreams of hosting playparties. I miss holding your sexy head of short hair as you sucked me. I miss your tummy. I miss your tattoos. I miss your hands in my hair as I sat on the floor in front of you.

Do you remember our torrid nights in the motels of Maple Shade? Do you remember the hot tub during the New Year's party with your SCAdian friends? Do you remember when we got lost driving in the woods? Do you remember being bent over the stair railing in Maryland, on the grounds where we met? And do you remember that sacred night during your first visit to me, when our embrace caressed with deity?

Have you heard the gongs at Millbrook Crescent that have called to you?

It's only been in recent months that I've come close to knowing as much love, desire, and passion in a partner. That feels good, and in the past year or so, that's helped me heal in many ways. It taught me that, no, you're not perfect, no, you're not The One For Me, no, it is possible to know deep and resonant love again. My head and heart already knew that, but in the past year, my body learned it too.

That's good. Because, in your own way, you were really pretty messed up too.

I still love you. I likely always will, even if it's different, even if it's ill-advised. But I'm also over you, and while I never wanted to be, that's ok.

I still have that last bottle of 2002 Boordy coastal claret. We drank its sister on that last night together. I've thought the bottle would make a fitting offering to Aphrodite (do you remember how incredulous you were when your reading with Her revealed how I would find love again?), but I have yet to uncork it for such a purpose.

That last night, you had told me how horny you were. I lit up. It had already been a little less than two months since we had last had sex. You seemed intrigued by my offer, made with my eyes and open hands and smile, for us to enjoy one another without the attached angst of our breakup, a casual no-risk fuck, but something in you kept you from crossing the line. I think it was your fear that I wouldn't keep it casual after all. I still don't know if you would have been right.

The January snow ticked at the bedroom window on that last night we had sex, and you mounted me in the dark and took me deeply as I held your beautiful, pendulous breasts. Later, I learned how that position was sacred to your patroness, and I enjoyed the irony and the knowledge of having loved you in a position so potent for feminine sexual empowerment. It seemed only fitting for you.

It was a Monday morning when we awoke on the futon. The cats were hungry, and I had to get ready for work. I was holding you close, and after I turned over, you caressed my back and scratched me there in the way you knew I liked. We barely spoke. I didn't want you to go, I didn't want to get up, but I forced myself to go ahead and make a nice breakfast for us. I knew it would be the last time we would break bread together. I knew you would be gone when I got home, and that our lives apart would really have begun.

You packed some of your things as I dressed. You were waiting for the moment to come, and then you would have our space to prepare yourself in privacy. When the moment did come, you were standing at the bedroom doorway and I in the hall. And it was there where, a thousand days ago, we shared our final deep and loving kiss. Your kiss was warm, your mouth open and giving, and I was glad for our embrace. After, you walked me to the front door and I took my leave.

For a while, in the later months that came, I made it a point to kiss future lovers in that same spot in the house. This wasn't because I was trying to relive that moment with you, but because I wanted to mark the change in what felt like a sensually seamless way. I wanted to remind myself that I could be ok without you in my world.

And I was right. In losing you, I gained a great deal, and all of my present and future lovers are and will be the beneficiaries of all that I learned.

I do love you, I do miss you, but in the end, it's you who has missed out... because, baby, I have a lot of love to give.