I pick up my mug and grip it between both palms, not trusting myself to hold it in only one hand with how unsteady I feel, before sinking into the spot on the couch closest to him. Grabbing the same blanket I always use, I curl up and revel in the heat of the fire warming my face.
I stare out the window that’s behind Ambrose, where the waning moon casts a soft glow across the trees, and I think of the line from the first poem he had read to me weeks ago. “Look for me by moonlight; come to me by moonlight.”
“Same book?” I ask him. I already know the answer, but it feels like the easiest way to break the silence.
“Yeah,” he answers. “It has a lot of my personal favorites in here.”
“Will you read me another poem?” I ask, sheepish after telling him how I hated poetry last time.
He smirks, clearly remembering the same thing I am, but his expression quickly shifts to one of approval.
“Any requests?”
I shake my head. “Just whatever you think I might like.” Anything to get my mind to stop spinning.
He absentmindedly scratches his short beard before seemingly coming to a decision. The rustle of his fingers flipping through the pages is the only sound in the room aside from the soft crackling of the fire.
“This is one you’ll probably know, but it’s one of my favorites,” he says. The seconds seem to stretch between us as he inhales and begins reading.
“It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.”
How is it that Ambrose’s voice has the power to make the words seem alive, to send them straight into the deepest parts of me? Even in the short phrases, I can feel the pain of the narrator, his words channeling that feeling within me I try so hard to suppress.
“But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we?—
Of many far wiser than we?—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”
Fuck. The power of that one stanza squeezes my heart in my chest. It says so much about enduring, eternal love.
Ambrose continues reading, the cadence and gentleness of his voice hypnotic. The poem is short, but every rhythmicline seems to intensify the emotions building within me. The words wrap around my heart and shift something inside me.
The poem is over only a few lines later, and just like the last night he read to me, we sit in silence for a few moments as I let the heaviness of the words sink in. The ultimate tragedy of love.
For some reason, my eyes burn with tears, and I fight to keep them from falling. What the hell is wrong with me?
When he lifts his gaze after closing the book, though, I don’t look away. Because in his eyes, I see the same depth of emotion, and it makes me wonder what these words mean to him. There has to be a reason he chose this one, of all the poems he could have picked.
The words don’t hurt me in the same way they might pain someone else. Though I can feel the despair resonating in every line, I realize that I have never loved in this way. I’ve never felt the all-encompassing love that would rip my heart out to lose. I think I loved Joel at one point, but it was never a love like that. It was a spark of attraction coupled with my hope for a better future, and we followed the typical steps of a relationship until I realized he wasn’t what I’d wanted after it was too late.
