My boyfriend, Chris, and I have been together for most of the last three years. We met when we were in 5th grade. From the very beginning, we've had something rare and special between us. In the childhood, we didn't care about it so much, but we wanted to spend time together. It's kind of hard to put into words because a lot of our friends don't understand the kind of relationship Chris and I have. It's based on caring, respect & trust.
We feel so comfortable with each other and even though we've been physically attracted to each other, we both decided not to rush into doing the things that a lot of kids are age are doing. We've been teased about never "making out" and only giving each other hugs...but we knew that when it was meant to happen, it would. We've talked about kissing and shared our thoughts about what it would be like , or what we "thought" it would be like. A couple of times when he was at my house, we actually planned for it to happen, but for one reason or another, it just didn’t work out.
Well, on Christmas, Chris came over to exchange gifts for Christmas. We always hang out in my room and watch movies. Our friends were on the floor and Chris and I were on my bed. He had his head on my lap. I had been thinking sensual about him all night. My heart was beating faster just thinking about it.
We were playing cushion fight, and started tickling fight afterwards. As he went on tickling me, my heart pounded faster and faster. I was losing control in myself, and he was too. I just knew in my heart that it was the right time and that's one of the things Chris has taught me ~ to follow my heart. He suddenly leaned down and kissed me.... When I felt his soft lips and hot tongue inside mine, I felt like melting on him. With closed eyes I saw the colors of rainbow and heart the song of love. He held me on my back and we kissed for a long time. With the kisses and hugs, I felt as if i was in heaven, with him inside me. I screamed with joy - I love you.
I swear at that moment...time just stopped for me. I’m not sure what I was expecting it to be like, but I knew when our lips touched that this had definitely been worth waiting for. I had never felt as close to anyone as I did at that moment. We kissed several more times that night and with each one, I fell a little more in love. I am so blessed to have someone like Chris in my life and I want him to know that our 'first kiss' was the most precious gift I've ever received:)
The precious gift
The fisrt one, which lasted lifetime
It was all over between us, we broke -up. But somehow I believed he still loves even then, even now. I was walking with him, we were side by side. In the hallway at school. We talked like normal friends do.. but I felt the tension of love.. I know he did too.
All of a sudden, he put his arms around me the way he'd used to hold me close. I tried to pull away... i didn't wanna be reminded of his touch, his embrace, it would hurt too much. I pulled away but still he held me close. He asked why I looked so scared of him...? I didn't answer. He asked it yet again, and I faced him... I looked into his eyes.. and at that moment my heart bursted with love and my soul yearned to hold him tight and never let him go... Hold him so tight that he will come inside me, and mix with me... He will never separate with me.
I didn't mean to tell him how I truly felt but my heart opened my mouth for me and i said ,''I Love you, I love you so much. He pulled me gently to the side and there we looked into each other's eyes... I felt as if his eyes was pulling me towards him. I could do nothing, but move towards him. We slowly got closer and our lips met.. I tried to pull away.. but our lips met again... yet again i pulled a way from his kiss... our heads were touching... our mouths less than an inch apart.. and again our lips met.. The soft and warm feeling, sweet taste and the feeling of love made me sticked to him more and more. It was gentle, sweet and sensual... The sweetest of all kisses... it lasted forever, through our life.
Secret Love
I met him accidentally not knowing that we could turn good friends. i know only by name, until one day i realize that we've been too close. not a single secret to each other. i never thought that you would be true to me the way you do. now, i am confused who really are you in my life. i am already engaged and as times goes by feel strange ... i think i am falling for you. but how can i feel this, i was not suppose to love you, you're too good to be true.
I thought i was the only one who feel this way. one day you got the courage to tell me that you love me dearly. i want to cry of what i heard. it can't be true. you also got a girlfriend then same with me.
I tried not to be fallen for you coz i know i am just hurting myself. now, you and your girlfriend broke up, you told me that i am the only one in your heart and mind. but still i can't love you freely, i still love him. i guess it's not the right time for us. the love we felt was right but we felt it in a wrong time.
I wish though we're not together these special feeling would remain in our thoughts and in our hearts. Just remember that i have loved you dearly as far as i know.
The soul mate
It was a freezing cold night in July last year, I had a bad dose of the flu, but had a compulsive need to go out to my favorite Metal Club.
That night, I was dancing like my life depended on it, enjoying my new found single status and the freedom that being alone allows.
I glanced up, saw my man dancing towards me, we smiled into each others eyes and kissed immediately. It was much better than my first kiss.
That night I took William home with me. One the Sunday he told me he loved me, and on Monday night he proposed.
We have been living together since the night we met and got married on 23 June, this year, 11 months to the day after we met.
Yesterday we signed for our dream house.
From the moment we met, William and I knew that we had, and always will be together forever....
Looking into your eyes
I am 16 years old! and people are always telling me that i am too young to love!! I am gonna prove them wrong! I am in love with someone that i love so much!
When he looks into my eyes i know that he is true! He is so good to me. I do not know where i would be if he hadn't come in to my life! Kenny has always been there for me and every time i am lying on the bed or couch with him he just has this look in his eyes! the look of love! I try every day to show him how much he means to me and that I will never let him go.
When our eyes met, I see his eyes, the eye balls, the dark portion of his eyes. I can see directly to his heart through his eyes. I always think of him and think to ask many questions. I want to express my love with words to him. But when I look into his eyes, I melt in it. I am lost, my existence is lost. I am no where. All the questions seem meaningless and all the words seem meaningless. We talk the language of heart through eyes.
He is the type of person that i want to marry! Him and i have talked about it and i think him and i will make it! we have been through tough times and we have pulled ourself out of it! we are open and loving! We will last forever.
Someone who changed my life
Phill and I met in the mid month of May last year. He is an incredible guy. Nicest and sweetest guy ever. I've never had a serious relationship before. I had a very low self-esteem. Always belittled myself. I Thought I would never have a boyfriend like every body does because I was told by my friends and my sister that I was chubby and ugly . I was extremely shy.
One day he came into my life and changed the way I think and see myself. We've been together for almost a year now. We've been through so much dramas. But in the end everything turned out alright. All these times we've been together. He has taught me to be patient with myself and others. He makes me feel beautiful. Thanks to him I'm more open up now.
I believe in myself and am very confidence. He has shown me a different world. A world I thought I would never have. A world that fill with love and warmth. He cares for me and makes me feel special. I want to spend the rest of my life with him, give him the most beautiful children ever.
I want the whole world to know that I love my baby, and no matter what happens in the future, I will always be there by his side, and I know he will stand by me too. I know there are many unexpected things that will stand in our ways in the days to come. But with this love that's so true, I know we will overcome any anything. Baby if you read this, I want you to know that I love you so very very much more than you'll ever know. I feel the three words "I love you", cannot express the feelings of my heart for you.
I know our love will never fade away with time. Time can only prove to you how much you mean to me. I really want you to know just how special you've become as I've watched my feelings grow days by days. I am better of knowing the girl that you have shown me. So thank you for changing my life and for being a wonderful boyfriend.
So strong Love
When I was just 4 years old, I started school, along with other children I didn't know. It was scary on the first day, but it got better as the days went by. There was a boy in my class who I straight away loved! I was only 4 years old and I had found the one I wanted to be with forever!
I had kept my crush on him a secret, as I didn't want him to find out. Day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, I had this one big crush on him! I loved him more and more as the time went by. I don't know why he was this attractive, whenever I looked into his eyes I saw love. Then when I was about 10 years old, my friends started to fancy him.
They told me about how much they loved him, but they didn't know I had a crush on him since I was four, this crush was still a secret. Then at the end of Year 6 (the last year at primary school) it was time to decide what Secondary School we wanted to attend. Four schools had accepted me, and my crush was going to goto one of them. I begged and begged my mum to goto that school, and finally, I did.
The first day of Secondary School was also scary as the first day of Primary. I didn't know anyone except for my crush, two of his mates, and only one of mine. I started to make friends quickly, and then me and my crush got put into two different classes! I couldn't believe this! I weren't in the same class as him! I guess it was a sign of moving on, because this relationship wasn't getting us anywhere.
I began to see less of him, and more boys started to take his place. At first I thought I wasn't doing the right thing by trying to forget him, but I knew it was for the best. I then started going out with them other boys, and hardly ever spoke to the boy I had loved since I was 4. Now I am still in that situation, when I hardly see him, and i am fancying other boys.
But whenever I walk passed him, look at him, think of him, I remember the times when I used to love him. He was my first love, and, although we are apart, we are together in my memory of 7 years of loving him, and we are together in my heart.
Love with best friend
It started when I was in third year high school. At first he introduced his self to me. I was amaze because he knew a lot about me. And that's all started for being his friend. I never knew that I'm gonna fell in love with him, because I use to tease him to my other girlfriend.
He followed my advice to court other girls but then suddenly he stop courting her which I really don't know what's the reason. After that incident he usually don't talk to me that he used to before. And I felt so lonely and realizing that I missing him so much. I tried to hide it.
Since then we always have a fight for nothing. My other friends used to tell me whats going on with me and my best friend because we look like a cats and dogs in the classroom. But I started to realize that my feeling for him was getting in to deep. I never told him . For so many years until we graduate from high school I never had a courage to tell him.
We both went through into lots of relationship but still in my heart asking for him to love me too. He still call me and tells me what's going on with his life but I couldn't tell him how much I love him. Until one day I found a strength to tell him that I love him since when we are in high school it's happen on his 21 birthday.
I was gonna say him personally but I changed my mind. I wanted to scream loudly and say "I love you" in front of all the people, but I can't do that. I just write it in a card and tell him everything after that I try to go away from him because I know he'll never forgive me. Now I'm here in the US I don't know what happened to him. I just heard from a friend of mine that he's married now. But the confusing thing about it is he's calling me at home and not telling his name but I know that was him. I don't know what to do about it. I don't know what he wants from me now. I am also married to a guy over here.
He calls me regularly. We recall our college days, fun we had together and all the other things. I always search my best friend in my husband but cannot find him like my best friend. I love him too much, but I don't know why out love didn't success, even though, we both loved each other and still love. I wish, one day, it might become successful and we would be together.
Finding prince charming
It's funny the things that we remember from our childhood. One of the earlies things that I remember: me sitting in front of the television set watching Sleeping Beauty. Dreaming that one day I too would find my prince charming, of course he had to look just like Prince Phillipe. After getting my heart broken too many times, I had given up hope. Prince Phillipe seemed to be just a fictional character.
One gray rainy afternoon, I sat across from my sister at local fast food restaurant, discussing how guys are just a waste of time. A handicapped lady slouched over her cheeseburger at a nearby table. California winters seem to depress everyone. I looked up as two Marine's, in their dress blues, stepped into the room. I love a man in uniform! One of them approached the handicapped lady; he brought a smile to her face. standing tall, with his broad back and perfect figure enhancing the sweetness of his blue eyes.
As I hesitated to get up and leave, my sister urged me to approach the charming Marine. I decided to avoid the heartache and walked out to the car. I looked back and my sister was gone. i waited inside the car, safe from the rain. My sister appeared on the rear view mirror, talking to the charming man inside the restaurant.Something inside me made me join them. Up close I studied his adorable nose, and perfect pink lips as he asked me for my number. My hands shook from excitement as I wrote on the back of a Marine recruiting card.
Upon arriving home I had come to the conclusion that he would be allergic to calling, like every other guy I'd met. I began working on one of my many forgotten paintings. Less than an hour had gone by when the phone rang. I held my breath and when i realized it was him my heart skipped a beat. His voice was so manly and enticing, when he asked to drop by, there was no need to think twice about my answer.
after rushing to clear the mess of paint off the kitchen floor and off myself, I heard a knock on the door. I took a deep breath, and even made a quick prayer, before opening the door. I opened the door to see the most beautiful creature, I had ever seen. In magazines, I see models, but nobody this charming. His smile was contagious, maybe it was his perfect lips or his adorable face. I felt at ease instantly.
Before walking out the door be enticed me into his strong embrace with such a magical effect. I knew this was special. The next few days were magical. everyday he would surprise me more and more in with just how perfect for me he was. This was too good to be true.
One day he held me in his strong arms, and after softly kissing me he told me that he only had a few more days left in town. I knew that he would have to leave soon, but this soon was beyond my imagination. I rested my face against his muscular chest and after closing my eyes to record that moment in my mind.
People say that long distance relationships do not work. All I know is that its been nine months since the day that we met, and we haven't seen each other as much as we wish we could, but I believe that once I've met my Prince Charming I am not letting him go. He is the man that I dreamed of meeting since I was a little girl. I've been waiting my whole life to meet him, and now the Marine's may have him far away from me, but I will wait for this wonderful man, for as long as it takes. Prince Phillipe turned out to be more than a fictional character. I guess I was wrong.
Talking to the love
Boy: I need someone to talk to.
Girl: I'm always here for you.
Boy: I know.
Girl: What's wrong?
Boy: I like her so much.
Girl: Talk to her.
Boy: I don't know. She won't ever like me.
Girl: Don't say that...you're amazing.
Boy: I just want her to know how I feel.
Girl: Then tell her.
Boy: She won't like me.
Girl: How do you know that?
Boy: I can just tell her...
Girl: Well just tell her.
Boy: What should I say?
Girl: Tell her how much you like her.
Boy: I tell her daily.
Girl: What do you mean?
Boy: I'm always with her...I love her.
Girl: I know how you feel. I have the same problem...but he'll never like me.
Boy: Wait. Who do you like?
Girl: Oh, some boy.
Boy: Oh, she won't like me either.
Girl: She does.
Boy: How do you know?
Girl: Because who wouldn't like you?
Boy: You.
Girl: You're wrong. I love you.
Boy: I love you too.
Girl: So are you going to talk to her?
Boy: I just did.
Asking about love
Boy: I need someone to talk to.
Girl: I'm always here for you.
Boy: I know.
Girl: What's wrong?
Boy: I like her so much.
Girl: Talk to her.
Boy: I don't know. She won't ever like me.
Girl: Don't say that...you're amazing.
Boy: I just want her to know how I feel.
Girl: Then tell her.
Boy: She won't like me.
Girl: How do you know that?
Boy: I can just tell her...
Girl: Well just tell her.
Boy: What should I say?
Girl: Tell her how much you like her.
Boy: I tell her daily.
Girl: What do you mean?
Boy: I'm always with her...I love her.
Girl: I know how you feel. I have the same problem...but he'll never like me.
Boy: Wait. Who do you like?
Girl: Oh, some boy.
Boy: Oh, she won't like me either.
Girl: She does.
Boy: How do you know?
Girl: Because who wouldn't like you?
Boy: You.
Girl: You're wrong. I love you.
Boy: I love you too.
Girl: So are you going to talk to her?
Boy: I just did.
Gift to loved ones
"Christmas really is getting more and more annoying every year.How I wish I could just lie down, go to sleep and only wake up after it...". Thinking this, I was looking gifts for my lovely children in the supermarket.
I made my way to the toy section, and there I started to curse the prices, wondering if after all kids really play with such expensive toys.
While looking in the toy section, I noticed a small boy of about 5 years old, pressing a doll against his chest. He kept on touching the hair of the doll and looked so sad. I wondered who was this doll for. Then the little boy turned to the old woman next to him, "Granny, are you sure I don't have enough money?"
The old lady replied, "You know that you don't have enough money to buy this doll, my dear."
Then she asked him to stay here for 5 minutes while she went to look around. She left quickly. The little boy was still holding the doll in his hand.
Finally, I started to walk toward him and I asked him who did he want to give this doll to.
"It is the doll that my sister loved most and wanted so much for this Christmas. She was so sure that Santa Claus would bring it to her."
I replied to him that may be Santa Claus will bring it to her, after all, and not to worry. But he replied to me sadly.
"No, Santa Claus can not bring it to her where she is now. I have to give the doll to my mother so that she can give it to her when she goes there."
His eyes were so sad while saying this.
"My sister has gone to be with God. Daddy says that Mummy will also go to see God very soon, so I thought that she could bring the doll with her to give it to my sister.
My heart nearly stopped. The little boy looked up at me and said, "I told daddy to tell mummy not to go yet. I asked him to wait until I come back from the supermarket."Then he showed me a very nice photo of him where he was laughing. He then told me, "I also want mummy to take this photo with her so that she will not forget me."
I love my mummy and I wish she doesn't have to leave me but daddy says that she has to go to be with my little sister."
Then he looked again at the doll with sad eyes, very quietly.I quickly reached for my wallet and took a few notes and said to the boy, "What if we checked again, just in case if you have enough money?"
"Ok," he said. "I hope that I have enough money to buy this." I added some of my money to his without him seeing and we started to count it. There was enough for the doll, and even some spare money.
The little boy said, "Thank you God for giving me enough money." Then he looked at me and added, "I asked yesterday before I slept for God to make sure I have enough money to buy this doll so that mummy can give it to my sister. He heard me. I also wanted to have enough money to buy a white rose for my mummy, but I didn't dare to ask God too much. But He gave me enough to buy the doll and the white rose."
"You know, my mummy loves white rose."
A few minutes later, the old lady came again and I left with my trolley. I finished my shopping in a totally different state from when I started. I couldn't get the little boy out of my mind.
Then I remembered a local newspaper article 2 days ago, which mentioned of a drunk man in a truck who hit a car where there was one young lady and a little girl. The little girl died right away, and the mother was left in a critical state. The family had to decide whether to pull the plug on the life-assisting machine, because the young lady would not be able to get out of the coma.
Was this the family of the little boy?
Two days after this encounter with the little boy, I read in the newspaper that the young lady had passed away.I couldn't stop myself and went to buy a bunch of white roses and I went to the mortuary where the body of the young woman was exposed for people to see and make last wish before burial.
She was there, in her coffin, holding a beautiful white rosein her hand with the photo of the little boy and the doll placed over her chest. I left the place crying, feeling that my life had been changed forever. The love that this little boy had for his mother and his sister is still, to that day, hard to imagine. And in a fraction of a second, a drunk man had taken all this away from him.
Love is divine, not money
Once upon a time, there was a guy who was very much in love with this girl. This romantic guy folded 1,000 pieces of paper cranes as a gift to his girl. Although, at that time he was just a small executive in his company, his future doesn't seemed too bright, they were very happy together. Until one day, his girl told him she was going to Paris and will never come back. She also told him that she cannot visualize any future for the both of them, so let's go their own ways there and then... heart broken, the guy agreed.
When he regained his confidence, he worked hard day and night, slogging his body and mind just to make something out of himself. He involved in many business involving insurance, banking, loan, investment, real state, stock exchange etc and made a lot of money. Finally with all these hard work and with the help of friends, this guy had set up his own company with lot of money to spend and secure life...
"You never fail until you stop trying." he always told himself. "I must make it in life!"
One rainy day, while this guy was driving, he saw an elderly couple sharing an umbrella in the rain walking to some destination. Even with the umbrella, they were still drenched. It didn't take him long to realize those were his ex-girlfriend's parents. With a heart in getting back at them, he drove slowly beside the couple, wanting them to spot him in his luxury sedan. He wanted them to know that he wasn't the same anymore, he had his own company, car, condo, etc. He had made it in life!
Before the guy can realize, the couple was walking towards a cometary,and he got out of his car and followed them...and he saw his ex-girlfriend, a photograph of her smiling sweetly as ever at him from her tombstone... and he saw his precious paper cranes in a bottle placed beside her tomb. Her parents saw him. He walked over and asked them why this had happened. They explained, she did not leave for France at all. She was stricken ill with cancer. In her heart, she had believed that he will make it someday, but she did not want her illness to be his obstacle ... therefore she had chosen to leave him.
She had wanted her parents to put his paper cranes beside her, because, if the day comes when fate brings him to her again he can take some of those back with him. The guy just wept ...the worst way to miss someone is to be sitting right beside them but knowing you can't have them and will never see them again.
A tragic story that perhaps happens only in the movies. At the end of the day, money is money is money but love is divine. In our quest for our material wealth, take time to make time for our loved ones. There will be a time when we have only memories to cling to.
Take this weekend to show your "love" to all that are close to us, how much you love them. Say I love you in soft and lovely voice.
Have you ever felt alone
Our first kiss
My very first kiss... yes, I remember it well. She had been visiting my family this Sunday afternoon into the early evening. It was in the middle of winter and being in a northern state, it was very cold.
Time finally came for him to return to her family a couple of blocks away from where I lived. I helped him on with his coat and we stepped through the door onto an uncovered porch.
The window in the door was all steamed up from the heat within so no one could see us outside except as a blur. When we stepped outside, we found that is was pouring down snow in very large flakes and starting to gather on the ground.
My heart was full of intense love for him, and it grew more as he was away. It was the moment when we met 3 long months after the separation. We were standing there watching the snow, and feeling the heart beat of each other. We turned toward each other, no words had been spoken, as if the snow had taken away our ability to talk. We looked into each other's eyes and still without saying a word, we stepped toward each other, we embraced and then our lips met; soft, warm, moist a totally sensual moment, but being so young, we had only the vaguest idea what sensual was.
My eyes were closed and his too were closed. I felt as if I melted and all the senses were gone. A feeling like I melted into him and he melted into me created the sensual kiss. Our lips stayed together a long time, the snow falling in these huge drops around us and on us. I never wanted to open my eyes. The world with the closed eyes were far more better than the whole world I saw since I was born.
Finally we parted and we both knew that the thing had finally happened for both of us. Our First Kiss. Unforgettable and sensual kiss with my love.
Thank you for being with me
If you've found that one person that has changed your life and shown you a love you never imagined before, then you know what I'm talking about.
In the 6 months that Paul and I have been together, he's proven all my past ideas wrong. I had given up on love, having been hurt so much before. I just thought that I was one of those people who weren’t "cut-out" for love and I think he thought the same.
Both of us were freshly out of painful breakups and neither of us thought we were ready to give it another shot. That all started changing the night of "Our Hollywood Kiss," our first kiss, straight from the big screen. It was perfect and I knew then that no matter what happened, my life would never be the same.
At that moment, I learned what love could be. Since that moment, each day, I fall more in love with him then I knew I could. In our 18 months together, he's given me a lifetime of love, support and happiness. I'll never be ready to give up on us. In 18 months, I've found my best friend and the man I want to spend the rest of my life with, all in the same person.
I don't know the words to explain my love for him, but I know that for the rest of my life, "Our Hollywood Kiss" has forever changed me.
There are no word that can express my feelings right away. If I may, please, let me say this,” I love you Paul, you are my world, and you truly are the greatest man of my life.” Thank you for being with me.
Love at first sight
"Oh My God!! He is so hot."
I said to my friends at lunch in the cafeteria. That was the First year in our college. One of my friends sitting with me rode the bus with him. So she started explaining him to me. She said he was a player, and really perverted. No way! he is a play boy.
They dared me to go out with him. I mean, I didn't even know this kid. My friends are daring me to go out with him. But of course I said yes I'll go out with him. He don't seem like a play boy. He is not seen flirting with other girls. They said if i am going, it had to be at least for 1 week.
By now 1 week had past and I was really getting to know him. We would talk on the phone a lot and we would go places together. Only knowing each other for 1 week. We were even starting to make out!!
After 1 week had past, my friends were like, "Ok it's been 1 week, you can dump him now." But I was starting to like him. I mean, he had already gotten me a beautiful bracelet. And he was nice and funny. He wasn't even a player like my friend said he was. He was not a play boy So that I was really proud of. And now we have been dating for 1 1/2 years. So if you don't belive in love at first site....then you are dumb!!
The heart will know that I love you
Although she meant to keep herself as stiff as possible she found herself softening to him. His lips were soft and warm, and that surprised her even more. She tried to pull back and say something, but then she felt the wet tip of his tongue slip between her lips. His hand slipped to her back holding her to him as if not wanting for that moment to stop.
It was her first kiss relived in a much more glorious moment in time. The stars were before her eyes again. Had she gone so long without knowing this kind of tenderness from a man that she forgot how to feel passion? She felt as if she was watching the two of them kiss. Desire to desire. They had both wanted this for a long while now and they finally were able to do it.
She was the one that broke of the kiss. Her legs were giving way from underneath her. Her heart was racing as she touched her fingers to her lips. She looked down, away from him, and her eyes were about to show tears, but she held them back. “Oh my God,” she said picking up her backpack from the table.
“What?” she heard him ask without looking at him.
“I have to go,” she said pushing her way out of the in-house doors. She stopped herself from running down the hall.
"God help me for my sin." She said to herself. "Why did I have to want it so bad that I didn’t listen to common sense?" She walked into the classroom and sat in a corner in front of the back door. "I felt alive inside again." She thought as a tear rolled down her eye. "Am I in love with him? Do I love him?" She found herself asking. Her finally answer was, “Probably not. I bet I am just chasing after a dream again.”
“I wanted to talk to you about this afternoon,” she said as they turned the corner of the hall to talk.
“You feel guilty about it?” he said crossing his arms over his chest.
“No… Yes… A little, but its not about the guilty thing,” she said shaking her head.
“Yeah…” he said looking behind the corner to make sure no one was coming down the hall.
“I didn’t mean to run from you. I just haven’t been kissed like that in a long time.” She shuffled on her feet for a second. “That kiss meant more than I thought it would. A lot more and I guess I just wanted you to know.”
She heard people coming down the hall and recognized one voice and as he turned to see who was coming she turned and fast walked towards that simple classroom. She felt it was a sanctuary for her.
All that night she kept her distance until she went home. Her tears rolled off her cheeks heavily that night. She knew what she had done and she was being punished enough for the deed. People say that self-punishment was worse then being punished by others. She had a boyfriend and he had a girlfriend… knowing that was her last thought before she went to sleep and the last tear rolled down her face.
The next day, she meet him at the corridor and said "I love you, but I love my boyfriend more than I love you." No one will understand this beside herself.
“A Secret Only The Heart Will Know.”
My Best Friend - Soul Mate
I met Robi briefly through a close friend, and later somehow acquired his mobile number. Once in a blue moon, we would SMS each other, just to say hi and find out what the other had been up to.
A year or so later, we met again, this time for a longer period of time. Jokes were exchanged and we grew more comfortable around each other. This meeting was the start of a very special friendship, a friendship that later grew to become much, much more...
In the beginning, it was just an occasional SMS here and there. Then came the all night conversations and the more intimate topics of conversation. Things like, "I'm so lonely right now" and "I wish I had someone to hold onto".
Both of us were very single and not liking it too much!! I'd been hurt before and so had he, but his was more recent and we often talked about it - so many times I thought to myself "The stupid girl must've been crazy! Look what she's thrown away!" Not once did it occur to me, that her loss could be my gain... He helped me through my many crushes and broken hearts, and managed to make me laugh with the line "So... would you like me to break his legs? Give me an address and phone number!"
No matter what time of the day or night that I messaged him, he always replied and he always seemed to know exactly what to say to make me feel better. He soon became the first person I looked to for anything - whether I needed advice, reassurance, encouragement, a laugh, a smile, or even just a hug - I turned to him.
He lives an hour away, but he began to drive up to see me and we'd just hang out for the day. I always had so much fun with him!! Then one night, I messaged him once again, crying because I'd been hurt by a guy. He was so sweet to me that night. He asked me if I wanted him to come and see me and he added that if he did, he was gonna give me the biggest hug and never let me go... He also told me that he'd do anything for me and that all I had to do was ask. And deep down inside, I'd already known that! So we agreed to meet up and I ended up going to see him the next day...
We sat in his room and watched TV, I guess cheering me up was on his agenda, so he started a pillow fight. The pillow fight pretty quickly turned into a tickle fight which somehow ended up with us passionate kissing. Straight away, I knew that there was nowhere else I'd rather be. Wrapped up in his arms, feeling so safe with him inside me, I came to the realization that I'd loved him all along. He was my partner in crime, and the one I could turn to no matter what, and that all those crushes that he’d helped me through? Had been just that – crushes.
There’d never been anyone else, and if I have my way, there never will be. What happened that day has changed my life so much and in so many positive ways. He's no longer just my best friend, he's my soul mate and my world. He's everything I’ve ever dreamed of and I love him with all of my heart…
The First Love
"Once upon a timee... I got lost in woodss..."
Maya was singing. She was hoping that the boy, Steve, who was her age, 16, would ask her out. She has got a beautiful voice. It was so nice, she got three solo's in her music class so far. "Maybe, just maybe, he'll go out with me if I sing to him!!!"
Maya was a great girl. She was nice, beautiful, smart, sexy and she got good grades. But she just couldn't get Steve to notice her. Her best friend, Lacia, told her time and time again to go up and talk to him. But she just wouldn't do it. Everytime she talked to a cute boy she stuttered and then walked away. But today was the day she was going to get up the nerve to talk to Steve!
"Tring...Tring...Tring...Tring!!!!!" There went the bell telling that it was time for lunch. She ran to the cafeteria and there was sweet, sweet Steve. She quickly wrote on a napkin 'WILL YOU GO OUT WITH ME' Love?, Maya. He friends all liked him, too. But they already had boyfriends. So, they let Maya have him. I mean this was her first "love at first sight" boy.
After school she and Steve walked next to each other and she dropped her books. We all know what happens now. A Girl drops her books on purpose or accident and her crush picks them us and asks the girl out!
"O My God!!!!" Maya screamed as she told her friends that she would be going to
Ramon's Bar and Grill with Steve on Saturday. Her friends were all glad for her and they could see how happy she and Steve would be together.
Friday came and went. On Saturday she let all her friends come over to dress her up. She looked like a million bucks. And that’s like almost what my mom could make in NEVER!!!!! All her friends knew that they would have a great date. And maybe even a kiss!?
When Steve saw her his mouth was Very much dry. She just smiled and he took her hand like she was the world. "So what are we going to do?" Maya whispered in his ear. "Well, I let's take a seat", Steve said in a sweet, soft voice.
If you think just hearing this story about them is cute this is what they look like together:
Steve and Maya ate and drank. They talked about their favorite things. How they're doing in school and their favorite movies. Maya finally got her wish, a kiss from, Steve, when the Taxi dropped her off at her house. Maya couldn't have had a better date, ever!!
Steve and Maya became the cutest couple in school! And nobody was going to get between them!!
Friends or Lovers
Helen lifted the coffee mug to her lips. It was three in the morning but her work was unfinished. The door creaked open. Bob entered with a bag of chips.
"Thought you could use some company." His too manly presence closed in on her.
Former lovers. Now best friends. Those old feelings she locked away came flooding back. "Thanks." She smiled, fighting off the heat that crept up her cheeks.
"This can wait. You need a break."
Shrugging off unwanted emotions, Helen stared into her coffee. "How's Sylvia?"
"We broke off."
"I'm sorry." Helen leaned forward to comfort him with a friendly hug.
His mouth slanted over hers. Her lips parted. Buried emotions overwhelmed her; she lost herself in their kiss.
Bob pulled back. "Sorry. I forgot myself. I just couldn't stay away from you anymore." His eyes dilated as they devoured her.
"Then don't." Her lips met his again.
Love and Death
IN woodlands of the bright and early world,
When love was to himself yet new and warm
And stainless, played like morning with a flower
Ruru with his young bride Priyumvada.
Fresh-cheeked and dew-eyed white Priyumvada
Opened her budded heart of crimson bloom
To love, to Ruru; Ruru, a happy flood
Of passion round a lotus dancing thrilled,
Blinded with his soul's waves Priyumvada.
To him the earth was a bed for this sole flower,
To her all the world was filled with his embrace.
Wet with new rains the morning earth, released
From her fierce centuries and burning suns,
Lavished her breath in greenness; poignant flowers
Thronged all her eager breast, and her young arms
Cradled a childlike bounding life that played
And would not cease, nor ever weary grew
Of her bright promise; for all was joy and breeze
And perfume, colour and bloom and ardent rays
Of living, and delight desired the world.
Then Earth was quick and pregnant tamelessly;
A free and unwalled race possessed her plains
Whose hearts uncramped by bonds, whose unspoiled thoughts
At once replied to light. Foisoned (sic) the fields;
Lonely and rich the forests and the swaying
Of those unnumbered tops affected men
With thoughts to their vast music kin. Undammed
The virgin rivers moved towards the sea,
And mountains yet unseen and peoples vague
Winged young imagination like an eagle
To strange beauty remote. And Ruru felt
The sweetness of the early earth as sap
All through him, and short life an aeon made
By boundless possibility, and love,
Sweetest of all unfathomable love,
A glory untired. As a bright bird comes flying
From airy extravagance to his own home,
And breasts his mate, and feels her all his goal,
So from boon sunlight and the fresh chill wave
Which swirled and lapped between the slumbering fields,
From forest pools and wanderings mid leaves
Through emerald ever-new discoveries,
Mysterious hillsides ranged and buoyant-swift
Races with our wild brothers in the meads,
Came Ruru back to the white-bosomed girl,
Strong-winged to pleasure. She all fresh and new
Rose to him, and he plunged into her charm.
For neither to her honey and poignancy
Artlessly interchanged, nor any limit
To the sweet physical delight of her
He found. Her eyes like deep and infinite wells
Lured his attracted soul, and her touch thrilled
Not lightly, though so light; the joy prolonged
And sweetness of the lingering of her lips
Was every time a nectar of surprise
To her lover; her smooth-gleaming shoulder bared
In darkness of her hair showed jasmine-bright,
While her kissed bosom by rich tumults stirred
Was a moved sea that rocked beneath his heart,
Then when her lips had made him blind, soft siege
Of all her unseen body to his rule
Betrayed the ravishing realm of her white limbs,
An empire for the glory of a God.
He knew not whether he loved most her smile,
Her causeless tears or little angers swift,
Whether held wet against him from the bath
Among her kindred lotuses, her cheeks
Soft to his lips and dangerous happy breasts
That vanquished all his strength with their desire,
Meeting his absence with her sudden face,
Or when the leaf-hid bird at night complained
Near their wreathed arbour on the moonlit lake,
Sobbing delight out from her heart of bliss,
Or in his clasp of rapture laughing low
Of his close bosom bridal-glad and pleased
With passion and this fiery play of love,
Or breaking off like one who thinks of grief,
Wonderful melancholy in her eyes
Grown liquid and with wayward sorrow large,
Thus he in her found a warm world of sweets,
And lived of ecstasy secure, nor deemed
Any new hour could match that early bliss.
But Love has joys for spirits born divine
More bleeding-lovely than his thorn less rose.
That day he had left, while yet the east was dark,
Rising, her bosom and into the river
Swam out, exulting in the sting and swift
Sharp-edged desire around his limbs, and sprang
Wet to the bank, and streamed into the wood.
As a young horse upon the pastures glad
Feels greensward and the wind along his mane
And arches as he goes his neck, so went
In an immense delight of youth the boy
And shook his locks, joy-crested. Boundlessly
He revelled in swift air of life, a creature
Of wide and vigorous morning. Far he strayed
Tempting for flower and fruit branches in heaven,
And plucked, and flung away, and brighter chose,
Seeking comparisons for her bloom; and followed
New streams, and touched new trees, and felt slow beauty
And leafy secret change; for the damp leaves,
Grey-green at first, grew pallid with the light
And warmed with consciousness of sunshine near;
Then the whole daylight wandered in, and made
Hard tracts of splendour, and enriched all hues.
But when a happy sheltered heat he felt
And heard contented voice of living things
Harmonious with the noon, he turned and swiftly
Went homeward yearning to Priyumvada,
And near his home emerging from green leaves
He laughed towards the sun: "O father Sun,"
He cried, "how good it is to live, to love!
Surely our joy shall never end, nor we
Grow old, but like bright rivers or pure winds
Sweetly continue, or revive with flowers,
Or live at least as long as senseless trees."
He dreamed, and said with a soft smile: "Lo, she!
And she will turn from me with angry tears
Her delicate face more beautiful than storm
Or rainy moonlight. I will follow her,
And soothe her heart with sovereign flatteries;
Or rather all tyranny exhaust and taste
The beauty of her anger like a fruit,
Vexing her soul with helplessness; then soften
Easily with quiet undenied demand
Of heart insisting upon heart; or else
Will reinvest her beauty bright with flowers,
Or with my hands her little feet persuade.
Then will her face be like a sudden dawn,
And flower compelled into reluctant smiles."
He had not ceased when he beheld her. She,
Tearing a jasmine bloom with waiting hands,
Stood drooping, petulant, but heard at once
His footsteps and before she was aware,
A sudden smile of exquisite delight
Leaped to her mouth, and a great blush of joy
Surprised her cheeks. She for a moment stood
Beautiful with her love before she died;
And he laughed towards her. With a pitiful cry
She paled; moaning, her stricken limbs collapsed.
But petrified, in awful dumb surprise,
He gazed; then waking with a bound was by her,
All panic expectation. As he came,
He saw a brilliant flash of coils evade
The sunlight, and with hateful gorgeous hood
Darted into green safety, hissing, death.
Voiceless he sank beside her and stretched out
His arms and desperately touched her face,
As if to attract her soul to live, and sought
Beseeching with his hands her bosom. O, she
Was warm, and cruel hope pierced him; but pale
As jasmines fading on a girl's sweet breast
Her cheek was, and forgot its perfect rose.
Her eyes that clung to sunlight yet, with pain
Were large and feebly round his neck her arms
She lifted and, desiring his pale cheek
Against her bosom, sobbed out piteously,
"Ah, love!" and stopped heart-broken; then, "O Love!
Alas the green dear home that I must leave
So early! I was so glad of love and kisses,
And thought that centuries would not exhaust
The deep embrace. And I have had so little
Of joy and the wild day and throbbing night,
Laughter, and tenderness, and strife and tears.
I have not numbered half the brilliant birds
In one green forest, nor am familiar grown
With sunrise and the progress of the eves,
Nor have with plaintive cries of birds made friends,
Cuckoo and rain-lark and love-speak-to-me.
I have not learned the names of half the flowers
Around me; so few trees know me by my name;
Nor have I seen the stars so very often
That I should die. I feel a dreadful hand
Drawing me from the touch of thy warm limbs
Into some cold vague mist, and all black night
Descends towards me. I no more am thine,
But go I know not where, and see pale shapes
And gloomy countries and that terrible stream.
O Love, O Love, they take me from thee far,
And whether we shall find each other ever
In the wide dreadful territory of death,
I know not. Or thou wilt forget me quite,
And life compel thee into other arms.
Ah, come with me! I cannot bear to wander
In that cold cruel country all alone,
Helpless and terrified, or sob by streams
Denied sweet sunlight and by thee unloved."
Slower her voice came now, and over her cheek
Death paused; then, sobbing like a little child
Too early from her bounding pleasures called,
The lovely discontented spirit stole
From her warm body white. Over her leaned
Ruru, and waited for dead lips to move.
Still in the greenwood lay Priyumvada,
And Ruru rose not from her, but with eyes
Emptied of glory hung above his dead,
Only, without a word, without a tear.
Then the crowned wives of the great forest came,
They who had fed her from maternal breasts,
And grieved over the lovely body cold,
And bore it from him; nor did he entreat
One last look nor one kiss, nor yet denied
What he had loved so well. They the dead girl
Into some distant greenness bore away.
But Ruru, while the stillness of the place
Remembered her, sat without voice. He heard
Through the great silence that was now his soul,
The forest sounds, a squirrel's leap through leaves,
The cheeping of a bird just overhead,
A peacock with his melancholy cry
Complaining far away, and tossings dim
And slight unnoticeable stir of trees.
But all these were to him like distant things
And he alone in his heart's void. And yet
No thought he had of her so lately lost,
Rather far pictures, trivial incidents
Of that old life before her delicate face
Had lived for him, dumbly distinct like thoughts
Of men that die, kept with long pomps his mind
Excluding the dead girl. So still he was,
The birds flashed by him with their swift small wings,
Fanning him. Then he moved, then rigorous
Memory through all his body shuddering
Awoke, and he looked up and knew the place,
And recognized greenness immutable,
And saw old trees and the same flowers still bloom.
He felt the bright indifference of earth
And all the lonely uselessness of pain.
Then lifting up the beauty of his brow
He spoke, with sorrow pale: "O grim cold Death!
But I will not like ordinary men
Satiate thee with cries, and falsely woo thee,
And make my grief thy theatre, who lie
Prostrate beneath thy thunderbolts and make
Night witness of their moans, shuddering and crying
When sudden memories pierce them like swords,
And often starting up as at a thought
Intolerable, pace a little, then
Sink down exhausted by brief agony.
O secrecy terrific, darkness vast,
At which we shudder! Somewhere, I know not where,
Somehow, I know not how, I shall confront
Thy gloom, tremendous spirit, and seize with hands
And prove what thou art and what man." He said,
And slowly to the forests wandered. There
Long months he travelled between grief and grief,
Reliving thoughts of her with every pace,
Measuring vast pain in his immortal mind.
And his heart cried in him as when a fire
Roars through wide forests and the branches cry
Burning towards heaven in torture glorious.
So burned, immense, his grief within him; he raised
His young pure face all solemnised with pain,
Voiceless. Then Fate was shaken, and the Gods
Grieved for him, of his silence grown afraid.
Therefore from peaks divine came flashing down
Immortal Agni and to the Uswuttha-tree
Cried in the Voice that slays the world: "O tree
That liftest thy enormous branches able
To shelter armies, more than armies now
Shelter, be famous, house a brilliant God.
For the grief grows in Ruru's breast up-piled,
As wrestles with its anguished barricades
In silence an impending flood, and Gods
Immortal grow afraid. For earth alarmed
Shudders to bear the curse lest her young life
Pale with eclipse and all-creating love
Be to mere pain condemned. Divert the wrath
Into thy boughs, Uswuttha—thou shalt be
My throne—glorious, though in eternal pain,
Yet worth much pain to harbor divine fire."
So ended the young pure destroyer's voice,
And the dumb god consented silently.
In the same noon came Ruru; his mind had paused,
Lured for a moment by soft wandering gleams
Into forgetfulness of pain; for thoughts
Gentle and near-eyed whispering memories
So sweetly came, his blind heart dreamed she lived.
Slow the Uswuttha-tree bent down its leaves,
And smote his cheek, and touched his heavy hair.
And Ruru turned illumined. For a moment,
One blissful moment he had felt 'twas she.
So had she often stolen up and touched
His curls with her enamoured fingers small,
Lingering, while the wind smote him with her hair
And her quick breath came to him like spring. Then he,
Turning, as one surprised with heaven, saw
Ready to his swift passionate grasp her bosom
And body sweet expecting his embrace.
Oh, now saw her not, but the guilty tree
Shrinking; then grief back with a double crown
Arose and stained his face with agony.
Nor silence he endured, but the dumb force
Ascetic and inherited, by sires
Fierce-musing earned, from the boy's bosom blazed.
"O Uswuttha-tree, wantonly who hast mocked
My anguish with the wind, but thou no more
Have joy of the cool wind nor green delight,
But live thy guilty leaves in fire, so long
As Aryan wheels by thy doomed shadow vast
Thunder to war, nor bless with cool wide waves
Lyric Saruswathi nations impure."
He spoke, and the vast tree groaned through its leaves,
Recognising its fate; then smouldered; lines
Of living fire rushed up the girth and hissed
Serpentine in the unconsuming leaves;
Last, all Hutashan in his chariot armed
Sprang on the boughs and blazed into the sky,
And wailing all the great tormented creature
Stood wide in agony; one half was green
And earthly, the other a weird brilliance
Filled with the speed and cry of endless flame.
But he, with the fierce rushing-out of power
Shaken and that strong grasp of anguish, flung
His hands out to the sun; "Priyumvada!"
He cried, and at that well-loved sound there dawned
With overwhelming sweetness miserable
Upon his mind the old delightful times
When he had called her by her liquid name,
Where the voice loved to linger. He remembered
The chompuc bushes where she turned away
Half-angered, and his speaking of her name
Masterfully as to a lovely slave
Rebellious who has erred; at that the slow
Yielding of her small head, and after a little
Her sliding towards him and beautiful
Propitiating body as she sank down
With timid graspings deprecatingly
In prostrate warm surrender, her flushed cheeks
Upon his feet and little touches soft;
Or her long name uttered beseechingly,
And the swift leap of all her body to him,
And eyes of large repentance, and the weight
Of her wild bosom and lips unsatisfied;
Or hourly call for little trivial needs,
Or sweet unneeded wanton summoning,
Daily appeal that never staled nor lost
Its sudden music, and her lovely speed,
Sedulous occupation left, quick-breathing,
With great glad eyes and eager parted lips;
Or in deep quiet moments murmuring
That name like a religion in her ear,
And her calm look compelled to ecstasy;
Or to the river luring her, or breathed
Over her dainty slumber, or secret sweet
Bridal outpantings of her broken name.
All these as rush unintermitting waves
Upon a swimmer overborne, broke on him
Relentless, things too happy to be endured,
Till faint with the recalled felicity
Low he moaned out: "O pale Priyumvada!
O dead fair flower! yet living to my grief!
But I could only slay the innocent tree,
Powerless when power should have been. Not such
Was Bhrigu from whose sacred strength I spring,
Nor Bhrigu's son, my father, when he blazed
Out from Puloma's side, and burning, blind,
Fell like a tree the ravisher unjust.
But I degenerate from such sires. O Death
That showest not thy face beneath the stars,
But comest masked, and on our dear ones seizing
Fearest to wrestle equally with love!
Nor from thy gloomy house any come back
To tell thy way. But O, if any strength
In lover's constancy to torture dwell
Earthward to force a helping god and such
Ascetic force be born of lover's pain,
Let my dumb pangs be heard. Whoe’er thou art,
O thou bright enemy of Death descend
And lead me to that portal dim. For I
Have burned in fires cruel as the fire
And lain upon a sharper couch than swords."
He ceased, and heaven thrilled, and the far blue
Quivered as with invisible downward wings.
But Ruru passioned on, and came with eve
To secret grass and a green opening moist
In a cool lustre. Leaned upon a tree
That bathed in faery air and saw the sky
Through branches, and a single parrot loud
Screamed from its top, there stood a golden boy,
Half-naked, with bright limbs all beautiful—
Delicate they were, in sweetness absolute:
For every gleam and every soft strong curve
Magically compelled the eye, and smote
The heart to weakness. In his hands he swung
A bow—not such as human archers use:
For the string moved and murmured like many bees,
And nameless fragrance made the casual air
A peril. He on Ruru that fair face
Turned, and his steps with lovely gesture chained.
"Who art thou here, in forests wandering,
And thy young exquisite face is solemnised
With pain? Luxuriously the Gods have tortured
Thy heart to see such dreadful glorious beauty
Agonize in thy lips and brilliant eyes:
As tyrants in the fierceness of others' pangs
Joy and feel strong, clothing with brilliant fire,
Tyrants in Titan lands. Needs must her mouth
Have been pure honey and her bosom a charm,
Whom thou desirest seeing not the green
And common lovely sounds hast quite forgot."
And Ruru, mastered by the God, replied:
"I know thee by thy cruel beauty bright,
Kama, who makest many worlds one fire.
Ah, wherefore wilt thou ask of her to increase
The passion and regret? Thou knowest, great love!
Thy nymph her mother, if thou truly art he
And not a dream of my disastrous soul."
But with the thrilled eternal smile that makes
The spring, the lover of Rathi golden-limbed
Replied to Ruru, "Mortal, I am he;
I am that Madan who inform the stars
With lustre and on life's wide canvas fill
Pictures of light and shade, of joy and tears,
Make ordinary moments wonderful
And common speech a charm: knit life to life
With interfusions of opposing souls
And sudden meetings and slow sorceries:
Wing the boy bridegroom to that panting breast,
Smite Gods with mortal faces, dreadfully
Among great beautiful kings and watched by eyes
That burn, force on the virgin's fainting limbs
And drive her to the one face never seen,
The one breast meant eternally for her.
By me come wedded sweets, by me the wife's
Busy delight and passionate obedience,
And loving eager service never sated,
And happy lips, and worshipping soft eyes:
And mine the husband's hungry arms and use
Unwearying of old tender words and ways,
Joy of her hair, and silent pleasure felt
Of nearness to one dear familiar shape.
Nor only these, but many affections bright
And soft glad things cluster around my name.
I plant fraternal tender yearnings, make
The sister's sweet attractiveness and leap
Of heart towards imperious kindred blood,
And the young mother's passionate deep look,
Earth's high similitude of One not earth,
Teach filial heart-beats strong. These are my gifts
For which men praise me, these my glories calm:
But fiercer shafts I can, wild storms blown down
Shaking fixed minds and melting marble natures,
Tears and dumb bitterness and pain unpitied,
Racked thirsting jealousy and kind hearts made stone:
And in undisciplined huge souls I sow
Dire vengeance and impossible cruelties,
Cold lusts that linger and fierce fickleness,
The loves close kin to hate, brute violence
And mad insatiable longings pale,
And passion blind as death and deaf as swords.
O mortal, all deep-souled desires and all
Yearnings immense are mine, so much I can."
So as he spoke, his face grew wonderful
With vast suggestion, his human-seeming limbs
Brightened with a soft splendour: luminous hints
Of the concealed divinity transpired.
But soon with a slight discontented frown:
"So much I can, as even the great Gods learn.
Only with death I wrestle in vain, until
My passionate godhead all becomes a doubt.
Mortal, I am the light in stars, of flowers
The bloom, the nameless fragrance that pervades
Creation: but behind me, older than me,
He comes with night and cold tremendous shade.
Hard is the way to him, most hard to find,
Harder to tread, for perishable feet
Almost impossible. Yet, O fair youth,
If thou must needs go down, and thou art strong
In passion and in constancy, nor easy
The soul to slay that has survived such grief
Steel then thyself to venture, armed by Love.
Yet listen first what heavy trade they drive
Who would win back their dead to human arms."
So much the God; but swift, with eager eyes
And panting bosom and glorious flushed face,
The lover: "O great Love! O beautiful Love!
But if by strength is possible, of body
Or mind, battle or spirit or moving speech,
Sweet speech that makes even cruelty grow kind,
Or yearning melody—for I have heard
That when Saruswathi in heaven her harp
Has smitten, the cruel sweetness terrible
Coils taking no denial through the soul,
And tears burst from the hearts of Gods—then I,
Making great music, or with perfect words,
Will strive, or staying him with desperate hands
Match human strength ’gainst formidable Death.
But if with price, ah God! what easier! Tears
Dreadful, innumerable I will absolve,
Or pay with anguish through the centuries,
Soul's agony and torture physical,
So her small hands about my face at last
I feel, close real hair sting me with life,
And palpable breathing bosom on me press."
Then with a lenient smile the mighty God:
"O ignorant fond lover, not with tears
Shalt thou persuade immitigable Death.
He will not pity all thy pangs: nor know
His stony eyes with music to grow kind,
Nor lovely words accepts. And how wilt thou
Wrestle with that grim shadow, who canst not save
One bloom from fading? A sole thing the Gods
Demand from all men living, sacrifice:
Nor without this shall any crown be grasped.
Yet many sacrifices are there, oxen,
And prayers, and Soma wine, and pious flowers,
Blood and the fierce expense of mind, and pure
Incense of perfect actions, perfect thoughts,
Or liberality wide as the sun's,
Or ruthless labour or disastrous tears,
Exile or death or pain more hard than death,
Absence, a desert, from the faces loved;
Even sin may be a sumptuous sacrifice
Acceptable for unholy fruits. But none
Of these the inexorable shadow asks:
Alone of gods Death loves not gifts: he visits
The pure heart as the stained. Lo, the just man
Bowed helpless over his dead, nor all his virtues
Shall quicken that cold bosom: near him the wild
Marred face and passionate and will not leave
Kissing dead lips that shall not chide him more.
Life the pale ghost requires: with half thy life
Thou mayst protract the thread too early cut
Of that delightful spirit—half sweet life.
O Ruru, lo, thy frail precarious days,
And yet how sweet they are! simply to breathe
How warm and sweet! And ordinary things
How exquisite, thou then shalt learn when lost,
How luminous the daylight was, mere sleep
How soft and friendly clasping tired limbs,
And the deliciousness of common food.
And things indifferent thou then shalt want,
Regret rejected beauty, brightnesses
Bestowed in vain. Wilt thou yield up, O lover,
Half thy sweet portion of this light and gladness,
Thy little insufficient share, and vainly
Give to another? She is not thyself:
Thou dost not feel the gladness in her bosom,
Nor with the torture of thy body will she
Throb and cry out: at most with tender looks
And pitiful attempt to feel move near thee,
And weep how far she is from what she loves.
Men live like stars that see each other in heaven,
But one knows not the pleasure and the grief
The others feel: he lonely rapture has,
Or bears his incommunicable pain.
O Ruru, there are many beautiful faces,
But one thyself. Think then how thou shalt mourn
When thou hast shortened joy and feelst at last
The shadow that thou hadst for such sweet store."
He ceased with a strange doubtful look. But swift
Came back the lover's voice, like passionate rain.
"O idle words! For what is mere sunlight?
Who would live on into extreme old age,
Burden the impatient world, a weary old man,
And look back on a selfish time ill-spent
Exacting out of prodigal great life
Small separate pleasures like an usurer,
And no rich sacrifice and no large act
Finding oneself in others, nor the sweet
Expense of Nature in her passionate gusts
Of love and giving, first of the soul's needs?
Who is so coldly wise, and does not feel
How wasted were our grandiose human days
In prudent personal unshared delights?
Why dost thou mock me, friend of all the stars?
How canst thou be love's god and know not this,
That love burns down the body's barriers cold
And laughs at difference—playing with it merely
To make joy sweeter? O too deeply I know,
The lover is not different from the loved,
Nor is their silence dumb to each other. He
Contains her heart and feels her body in his,
He flushes with her heat, chills with her cold.
And when she dies, oh! when she dies, oh me,
The emptiness, the maim! the life no life,
The sweet and passionate oneness lost! And if
By shortening of great grief won back, O price
Easy! O glad briefness, aeons may envy!
For we shall live not fearing death, nor feel
As others yearning over the loved at night
When the lamp flickers, sudden chills of dread
Terrible; nor at short absence agonise,
Wrestling with mad imagination. Us
Serenely when the darkening shadow comes,
One common sob shall end and soul clasp soul,
Leaving the body in a long dim kiss.
Then in the joys of heaven we shall consort,
Amid the gladness often touching hands
To make bliss sure; or in the ghastly stream
If we must anguish, yet it shall not part
Our passionate limbs inextricably locked
By one strong agony, but we shall feel
Hell's pain half joy through sweet companionship.
God Love, I weary of words. O wing me rather
To her, my eloquent princess of the spring,
In whatsoever wintry shores she roam."
He ceased with eager forward eyes; once more
A light of beauty immortal through the limbs
Gleaming of the boy-god and soft sweet face,
Glorifying him, flushed, and he replied:
"Go then, O thou dear youth, and bear this flower
In thy hand warily. For thou shalt come
To that high meeting of the Ganges pure
With vague and violent Ocean. There arise
And loudly appeal my brother, the wild sea."
He spoke and stretched out his immortal hand,
And Ruru's met it. All his young limbs yearned
With dreadful rapture shuddering through them. He
Felt in his fingers subtle uncertain bloom,
A quivering magnificence, half fire,
Whose petals changed like flame, and from them breathed
Dangerous attraction and alarmed delight,
As at a peril near. He raised his eyes,
But the green place was empty of the God.
Only the faery tree looked up at heaven
Through branches, and with recent pleasure shook.
Then over fading earth the night was lord.
But from Shatudru and Bipasha, streams
Once holy, and loved Iravathi and swift
Clear Chandrabhaga and Bitosta's toil
For man, went Ruru to bright sumptuous lands
By Aryan fathers not yet paced, but wild,
But virgin to our fruitful human toil,
Where nature lay reclined in dumb delight
Alone with woodlands and the voiceless hills.
He with the widening yellow Ganges came,
Amazed, to trackless countries where few tribes,
Kirath and Poundrian, warred, worshipping trees
And the great serpent. But robust wild earth,
But forests with their splendid life of beasts
Savage mastered those strong inhabitants.
Thither came Ruru. In a thin soft eve
Ganges spread far her multitudinous waves,
A glimmering restlessness with voices large,
And from the forests of that half-seen bank
A boat came heaving over it, white-winged,
With a sole silent helmsman marble-pale.
Then Ruru by his side stepped in; they went
Down the mysterious river and beheld
The great banks widen out of sight. The world
Was water and the skies to water plunged.
All night with a dim motion gliding down
He felt the dark against his eyelids; felt,
As in a dream more real than daylight,
The helmsman with his dumb and marble face
Near him and moving wideness all around,
And that continual gliding dimly on,
As one who on a shoreless water sails
For ever to a port he shall not win.
But when the darkness paled, he heard a moan
Of mightier waves and had the wide great sense
Of ocean and the depths below our feet.
But the boat stopped; the pilot lifted on him
His marble gaze cheval with the stars.
Then in the white-winged boat the boy arose
And saw around him the vast sea all grey
And heaving in the pallid dawning light.
Loud Ruru cried across the murmur: "Hear me,
O inarticulate grey Ocean, hear.
If any cadence in thy infinite
Rumour was caught from lover's moan, O Sea,
Open thy abysses to my mortal tread.
For I would travel to the despairing shades,
The spheres of suffering where entangled dwell
Souls unreleased and the untimely dead
Who weep remembering. Thither, O guide me,
No despicable wayfarer, but Ruru,
But son of a great Rishi, from all men
On earth selected for peculiar pangs,
Special disaster. Lo, this petalled fire,
How freshly it blooms and lasts with my great pain!"
He held the flower out subtly glimmering.
And like a living thing the huge sea trembled,
Then rose, calling, and filled the sight with eaves,
Converging all its giant crests; towards him
Innumerable waters loomed and heaven
Threatened. Horizon on horizon moved
Dreadfully swift; then with a prone wide sound
All Ocean hollowing drew him swiftly in,
Curving with monstrous menace over him.
He down the gulf where the loud waves collapsed
Descending, saw with floating hair arise
The daughters of the sea in pale green light,
A million mystic breasts suddenly bare,
And came beneath the flood and stunned beheld
A mute stupendous march of waters race
To reach some viewless pit beneath the world.
Ganges he saw, as men predestined rush
Upon a fearful doom foreseen, so ran,
Alarmed, with anguished speed, the river vast.
Veiled to his eyes the triple goddess rose.
She with a sound of water cried to him,
A thousand voices moaning with one pain:
"Lover, who fearedst not sunlight to leave,
With me thou mayst behold that helpless spirit
Lost in the gloom, if still thy burning bosom
Have courage to endure great Nature's night
In the dire lands where I, a goddess, mourn
Hurting my heart with my own cruelty."
She darkened to the ominous descent,
Unwilling, and her once so human waves
Sent forth a cry not meant for living ears.
And Ruru chilled; but terrible strong love
Was like a fiery finger in his breast
Pointing him on; so he through horror went
Conducted by inexorable sound.
For monstrous voices to his ear were close,
And bodiless terrors with their dimness seized him
In an obscurity phantasmal. Thus
With agony of soul to the grey waste
He came, glad of the pain of passage over,
As men who through the storms of anguish strive
Into abiding tranquil dreariness
And draw sad breath assured; to the grey waste,
Hopeless Patal, the immutable
Country, where neither sun nor rain arrives,
Nor happy labour of the human plough
Fruitfully turns the soil, but in vague sands
And indeterminable strange rocks and caverns
That into silent blackness huge recede,
Dwell the great serpent and his hosts, writhed forms,
Sinuous, abhorred, through many horrible leagues
Coiling in a half darkness. Shapes he saw,
And heard the hiss and knew the lambent light
Loathsome, but passed compelling his strong soul.
At last through those six tired hopeless worlds,
Too hopeless far for grief, pale he arrived
Into a nether air by anguish moved,
And heard before him cries that pierced the heart,
Human, not to be borne, and issued shaken
By the great river accursed. Maddened it ran,
Anguished, importunate, and in its waves
The drifting ghosts their agony endured.
There Ruru saw pale faces float of kings
And grandiose victors and revered high priests
And famous women. Now rose from the wave
A golden shuddering arm and now a face.
Torn piteous sides were seen and breasts that quailed.
Over them moaned the penal waters on,
And had no joy of their fierce cruelty.
Then Ruru, his young cheeks with pity wan,
Half moaned: "O miserable race of men,
With violent and passionate souls you come
Foredoomed upon the earth and live brief days
In fear and anguish, catching at stray beams
Of sunlight, little fragrances of flowers,
Then from your spacious earth in a great horror
Descend into this night, and here too soon
Must expiate your few inadequate joys.
O bargain hard! Death helps us not. He leads
Alarmed, all shivering from his chill embrace,
The naked spirit here. Oh my sweet flower,
Art thou too whelmed in this fierce wailing flood?
Ah me! But I will haste and deeply plunge
Into its hopeless pools and either bring
Thy old warm beauty back beneath the stars,
Or find thee out and clasp thy tortured bosom
And kiss thy sweet wrung lips and hush thy cries.
Love shall draw half thy pain into my limbs;
Then we shall triumph glad of agony."
He ceased and one replied close by his ear:
"O thou who troublest with thy living eyes
Established death, pass on. She whom thou seekest
Rolls not in the accursèd tide. For late
I saw her mid those pale inhabitants
Whom bodily anguish visits not, but thoughts
Sorrowful and dumb memories absolve,
And martyrdom of scourged hearts quivering."
He turned and saw astride the dolorous flood
A mighty bridge paved with mosaic fire,
All restless, and a woman clothed in flame,
With hands calamitous that held a sword,
Stood of the quaking passage sentinel.
Magnificent and dire her burning face.
"Pass on," she said once more, "O Bhrigu's son;
The flower protects thee from my hands." She stretched
One arm towards him and with violence
Majestic over the horrid arch compelled.
Unhurt, though shaking from her touch, alone
He stood upon an inner bank with strange
Black dreary mosses covered and perceived
A dim and level plain without one flower.
Over it paced a multitude immense
With gentle faces occupied by pain;
Strong men were there and grieving mothers, girls
With early beauty in their limbs and young
Sad children of their childlike faces robbed.
Naked they paced with falling hair and gaze
Drooping upon their bosoms, weak as flowers
That die for want of rain unmurmuring.
Always a silence was upon the place.
But Ruru came among them. Suddenly
One felt him there and looked, then as a wind
Moves over a still field of patient corn,
And the ears stir and shudder and look up
And bend innumerably flowing, so
All those dumb spirits stirred and through them passed
One shuddering motion of raised faces; then
They streamed towards him without sound and caught
With desperate hands his robe or touched his hair
Or strove to feel upon them living breath.
Pale girls and quiet children came and knelt
And with large sorrowful eyes into his looked.
Yet with their silent passion the cold hush
Moved not; but Ruru's human heart half burst
With burden of so many sorrows; tears
Welled from him; he with anguish understood
That terrible and wordless sympathy
Of dead souls for the living. Then he turned
His eyes and scanned their lovely faces strange
For that one face and found it not. He paled,
And spoke vain words into the listless air:
"O spirits once joyous, miserable race,
Happier if the old gladness were forgot!
My soul yearns with your sorrow. Yet ah! reveal
If dwell my love in your sad nation lost.
Well may you know her, O wan beautiful spirits!
But she most beautiful of all that died,
By sweetness recognisable. Her name
The sunshine knew." Speaking his tears made way:
But they with dumb lips only looked at him,
A vague and empty mourning in their eyes.
He murmured low: "Ah, folly! were she here,
Would she not first have felt me, first have raised
Her lids and run to me, leaned back her face
Of silent sorrow on my breast and looked
With the old altered eyes into my own
And striven to make my anguish understand?
Oh joy, had she been here! for though her lips
Of their old excellent music quite were robbed,
Yet her dumb passion would have spoken to me;
We should have understood each other and walked
Silently hand in hand, almost content."
He said and passed through those untimely dead.
Speechless they followed him with clinging eyes.
Then to a solemn building weird he came
With grave colossal pillars round. One dome
Roofed the whole brooding edifice, like cloud,
And at the door strange shapes were pacing, armed.
Then from their fear the sweet and mournful dead
Drew back, returning to their wordless grief.
But Ruru to the perilous doorway strode,
And those disastrous shapes upon him raised
Their bows and aimed; but he held out Love's flower,
And with stern faces checked they let him pass.
He entered and beheld a silent hall
Dim and unbounded; moving then like one
Who up a dismal stair seeks ever light,
Attained a dais brilliant doubtfully
With flaming pediment and round it coiled
Python and Naga monstrous, Joruthcaru,
Tuxuc and Vasuki himself, immense,
Magic Carcotaca all flecked with fire;
And many other prone destroying shapes
Coiled. On the wondrous dais rose a throne,
And he its pedestal whose lotus hood
With ominous beauty crowns his horrible
Sleek folds, great Mahapudma; high displayed
He bears the throne of Death. There sat supreme
With those compassionate and lethal eyes,
Who many names, who many natures holds;
Yama, the strong pure Hades sad and subtle,
Dharma, who keeps the laws of old untouched,
Critanta, who ends all things and at last
Himself shall end. On either side of him
The four-eyed dogs mysterious rested prone,
Watchful, with huge heads on their paws advanced;
And emanations of the godhead dim
Moved near him, shadowy or serpentine,
Vast Time and cold irreparable Death.
Then Ruru came and bowed before the throne;
And swaying all those figures stirred as shapes
Upon a tapestry moved by the wind,
And the sad voice was heard: "What breathing man
Bows at the throne of Hades? By what force,
Spiritual or communicated, troubles
His living beauty the dead grace of Hell?"
And one replied who seemed a neighbouring voice:
"He has the blood of Gods and Titans old.
An Apsara his mother liquid-orbed
Bore to the youthful Chyavan's strong embrace
This passionate face of earth with Eden touched.
Chyavan was Bhrigu's child, Puloma bore,
The Titaness,—Bhrigu, great Brahma's son.
Love gave the flower that helps by anguish; therefore
He chilled not with the breath of Hades, nor
The cry of the infernal stream made stone."
But at the name of Love all hell was moved.
Death's throne half faded into twilight; hissed
The phantoms serpentine as if in pain,
And the dogs raised their dreadful heads. Then spoke
Yama: "And what needs Love in this pale realm,
The warm great Love? All worlds his breath confounds,
Mars solemn order and old steadfastness.
But not in hell his legates come and go;
His vernal jurisdiction to bare Hell
Extends not. This last world resists his power
Youthful, anarchic. Here will he enlarge
Tumult and wanton joys?"
The voice replied:
"Menaca momentary on the earth,
Heaven's Apsara by the fleeting hours beguiled
Played in the happy hidden glens; there bowed
To yoke of swift terrestrial joys she bore,
Immortal, to that fair Gundhurva king
A mortal blossom of delight. That bloom
Young Ruru found and plucked, but her too soon
Thy fatal hooded snake on earth surprised,
And he through gloom now travels armed by Love."
But then all Hades swaying towards him cried:
"O mortal, O misled! But sacrifice
Is stronger, nor may law of Hell or Heaven
Its fierce effectual action supersede.
Thy dead I yield. Yet thou bethink thee, mortal,
Not as a tedious evil nor to be
Lightly rejected gave the gods old age,
But tranquil, but august, but making easy
The steep ascent to God. Therefore must Time
Still batter down the glory and form of youth
And animal magnificent strong ease,
To warn the earthward man that he is spirit
Dallying with transience, nor by death he ends,
Nor to the dumb warm mother's arms is bound,
But called unborn into the unborn skies.
For body fades with the increasing soul
And wideness of its limit grown intolerant
Replaces life's impetuous joys by peace.
Youth, manhood, ripeness, age, four seasons
Twixt its return and pale departing life
Describes, O mortal,—youth that forward bends
Midst hopes, delights and dreamings; manhood deepens
To passions, toils and thoughts profound; but ripeness
For large reflective gathering-up of these,
As on a lonely slope whence men look back
Down towards the cities and the human fields
Where they too worked and laughed and loved; next age,
Wonderful age with those approaching skies.
That boon wilt thou renounce? Wherefore? To bring
For a few years—how miserably few!—
Her sunward who must after all return.
Ah, son of Rishis, cease, Lo, I remit
Hell's grasp, not oft-relinquished, and send back
Thy beautiful life unborrowed to the stars.
Or thou must render to the immutable
Total all thy fruit-bearing years; then she
Reblossoms." But the Shadow antagonist:
"Let him be shown the glory he would renounce."
And over the flaming pediment there moved,
As on a frieze a march of sculptures, carved
By Phidias for the Virgin strong and pure,
Most perfect once of all things seen in earth
Or Heaven, in Athens on the Acropolis,
But now dismembered, now disrupt! or as
In Buddhist cavern or Orissan temple,
Large aspirations architectural,
Warrior and dancing-girl, adept and king,
And conquering pomps and daily peaceful groups
Dream delicately on, softening with beauty
Great Bhuvanayshwar, the Almighty's house,
With sculptural suggestion so were limned
Scenes future on a pediment of fire.
There Ruru saw himself divine with age,
A Rishi to whom infinity is close,
Rejoicing in some green song-haunted glade
Or boundless mountain-top where most we feel
Wideness, not by small happy things disturbed.
Around him, as around an ancient tree
Its seedlings, forms august or flame-like rose;
They grew beneath his hands and were his work;
Great kings were there whom time remembers, fertile
Deep minds and poets with their chanting lips
Whose words were seed of vast philosophies
These worshipped; above this earth's half-day he saw
Amazed the dawn of that mysterious Face
And all the universe in beauty merge.
Mad the boy thrilled upwards, then spent ebbed back.
Over his mind, as birds across the sky
Sweep and are gone, the vision of those fields
And drooping faces came; almost he heard
The burdened river with human anguish wail.
Then with a sudden fury gathering
His soul he hurled out of it half its life,
And fell, like lightning, prone. Triumphant rose
The Shadow chill and deepened giant night.
Only the dais flickered in the gloom,
And those snake-eyes of cruel fire subdued.
But suddenly a bloom, a fragrance. Hell
Shuddered with bliss: resentful, overborne,
The world-besetting Terror faded back
Like one grown weak by desperate victory,
And a voice cried in Ruru's tired soul:
"Arise! the strife is over, easy now
The horror that thou hast to face, the burden
Now shared." And with a sudden burst like spring
Life woke in the strong lover over-tired.
He rose and left dim Death. Twelve times he crossed
Boithorini, the river dolorous,
Twelve times resisted Hell and hurried down
Into the ominous pit where plunges black
The vast stream thundering, saw, led puissantly
From night to unimaginable night,
As men oppressed in dreams, who cannot wake,
But measure penal visions,—punishments
Whose sight pollutes, unheard-of tortures, pangs
Monstrous, intolerable mute agonies,
Twisted unmoving attitudes of pain,
Like thoughts inhuman in statuary. A fierce
And iron voicelessness had grasped those worlds.
No horror of cries expressed their endless pain,
No saving struggle, no breathings of the soul.
And in the last hell irremediable
Where Ganges clots into that fatal pool,
Appalled he saw her; pallid, listless, bare—
O other than that earthly warmth and grace
In which the happy roses deepened and dimmed
With come-and-go of swift enamoured blood!
Dumb drooped she; round her shapes of anger armed
Stood dark like thunder-clouds. But Ruru sprang
Upon them, burning with the admitted God.
They from his touch like ineffectual fears
Vanished; then sole with her, trembling he cried
The old glad name and crying bent to her
And touched, and at the touch the silent knots
Of Hell were broken and its sombre dream
Of dreadful stately pains at once dispersed.
Then as from one whom a surpassing joy
Has conquered, all the bright surrounding world
Streams swiftly into distance, and he feels
His daily senses slipping from his grasp,
So that unbearable enormous world
Went rolling mighty shades, like the wet mist
From men on mountain-tops; and sleep outstretched
Rising its soft arms towards him and his thoughts,
As on a bed, sank to ascending void.
But when he woke, he heard the koïl insist
On sweetness and the voice of happy things
Content with sunlight. The warm sense was round him
Of old essential earth, known hues and custom
Familiar tranquillising body and mind,
As in its natural wave a lotus feels.
He looked and saw all grass and dense green trees,
And sunshine and a single grasshopper
Near him repeated fierily its note.
Thrilling he felt beneath his bosom her;
Oh, warm and breathing were those rescued limbs
Against the greenness, vivid, palpable, white,
With great black hair and real and her cheek's
Old softness and her mouth a dewy rose.
For many moments comforting his soul
With all her jasmine body sun-ensnared
He fed his longing eyes and, half in doubt,
With touches satisfied himself of her.
Hesitating he kissed her eyelids. Sighing
With a slight sob she woke and earthly large
Her eyes looked upward into his. She stretched
Her arms up, yearning, and their souls embraced;
Then twixt brief sobbing laughter and blissful tears,
Clinging with all her limbs to him, "O love,
The green green world! the warm sunlight!" and ceased,
Finding no words; but the earth breathed round them,
Glad of her children and the koïl's voice
Persisted in the morning of the world.
