infallibly each night i come to the precipice of that gaping chasm of mortality and as i stare into its mouth the darkness becomes more unfathomable. how can i see beyond this state of perpetual youth that stretches into the horizon of my life? and how can any person accept that there will be a last day, a last breakfast, a last smile, a last kiss, a last breath, a last touch of skin on skin? as he lays beside me, his body reassuring me with it’s liveliness, i realize that it is not my mortality that keeps my eyes transfixed on the velvety blackness of that incomprehensible abyss but his. when he sleeps, wrapped in a familiar darkness, i see his many fates, and when i think that one day will be our last day all the world goes dim as if the wide mouth of that chasm were swallowing it. there will be a day when the lid is shut and the coffin lowered or the ashes spread or buried when i will never see him again, or touch him. and there will be no sign of me on him, no imprint where i kissed his shoulder, or any stains where my tears seeped through his shirt, no bruises where my word (or fists) have bruised him, he will be unblemished by the invisible scars of love that only i can see.