Love Behind Bars

I yearned for her love.

She sat there, eyes agleam with tears, phone in hand.  Nothing was said, nothing needed to be said.  I understood her pain.  It was I who gave birth to it.  Without speaking, she had spoken.  She spoke fluently.  The language of heartbreak.  Her eyes spoke of the lonely nights to come. Our child in her arms spoke of the broken home.  This was my doing.  All of it.

Tears fell from her eyes as if her spirit had erupted into a thunderstorm.  It would be years before the forecast could change. I wanted to embrace her and our angel, to protest that this storm would pass.  But no words would suffice.  She placed the phone down with a ballerina's grace and put her manicured hand to the Plexiglas.  She longed for my touch, wanted to feel the hands that had brought her pleasure, to touch the strength she had come to know.  I placed my hand on the glass in return.

We connected. 

Our kindred spirits. 

Together again.

Everything important in life rested between those two imprints. 

A lifetime of togetherness.

The good and the bad.

The family we had. 

Our love. 

Our hopes. 

Our dreams.

Our fears.

Our sorrows.

All of it, right there, in that finite space, between two hands.

She stared back through the glass, with tear-laced eyes.  She was as beautiful as the sunrise.  She was the kind of beautiful that would make an atheist believe. That was her.  So beautiful.  Inside and out.  The most beautiful woman in the world, in all of creation.  Her beauty gave me strength.  It caused me to believe.  In her.  In us.  In love.  In our family.

In that moment, I saw a new day.  I saw a new life.  I saw a miracle.  I mouthed, "I love you."  As tears streamed down my face, as tears fell from her face, as our hands were aligned in togetherness, she mouthed, "I love you too, but I can't do this."