Glass of Water

He filled a glass with water and put it on his nightstand. He did that every night. It was a habit; maybe a ritual of some kind. He never drank the water, and the next day the glass would be emptied and placed in the dishwasher. Maybe it was a security blanket of some type- he couldn't sleep without a glass of water within arm's reach. I pointed out that it didn't make sense, but it always became an argument and so I stayed silent about it for years. Every night I'd watch him pour a glass of water and take it to bed. It became a part of him- something I learned to overlook. Something I came to expect. One more little thing about him that I loved.

One day he was gone. I tried to justify it-- was it fate, destiny? We never fought, we never broke up. He's still my other half. But some higher power stepped in and stamped an expiration date on our relationship. I bargained with God that expiration dates were only hints-- maybe it wasn't an expiration date after all- maybe the lable was meant to read "freshest if used by..". I drink milk that expired two weeks ago, but it still tastes good. Expiration dates are not always finite. But in this case, the expiration date was permanent. He was gone.

It was a few days later- after the whirlwind-- when I noticed it. The glass of water on the nightstand. Just two days ago, he walked into the kitchen and filled that glass. He carried it to the bedroom, sat it on the night stand, cuddled up next to me and ignored that glass forever. Sometime during the night, he was taken from me. He was gone. I awoke from my dreams and finally realized that he was gone, but the glass of water was still there.

I picked up the glass and studied it, as if it was the last possession of a great God. To me it was. I lifted the glass and looked at it- imagining it in his hand. I sipped from it, hoping that by chance my lips might touch the same spot that his had, two days earlier. Just to make sure, I moved my lips around the rim of the glass. On some scale I felt as if I had shared a last kiss with him.

It's been a couple of decades since then... I've loved and kissed lots of guys since then. But my fondest memory of a kiss has to be the one that I shared with him that day, over a glass of water that he left behind on our nightstand the night that he died.