She said goodbye with her eyes though she never said it with her voice. I knew she would not be with me forever, because of her goodbye eyes.

"Hold me," she said. But her eyes said, "For a little while."

"Kiss me," she whispered. But her eyes said, "So you'll remember me when I'm gone."

"Love me," she said when we lay in bed together. But her eyes said, "Goodbye."

That faraway look, not looking through me or past me, but deep into me, deep into my own feelings about love and commitment, deep into where I keep my fear that every lover I have will eventually say goodbye.

"Do you love me?" I asked.

"Of course," she replied. "And you love me." This said after our greedy lovemaking in that sweet moment when it seems that one's lover has given up that last secret place.

"Hold me closer, hold me tight, hold me forever, just like this," she whispered. She looked at me, her lips opening for a deep kiss. But her eyes said goodbye.

I held her and we kissed and we made love again. This time slowly and sweetly like the last dance after the band has gone home and the only music is a memory.

I tasted her breasts, warm and soft and sweet as honey on fresh bread after the sweaty meeting of flesh we had earlier enjoyed. I breathed in the scent of her; clean and wild like wind off the sea; dark and musky like animals that have never known about conventional lives. I thought about her while we made love; thought about her laughter and her loving, her quick wit that made me laugh, too.

I played with her hair, dark as jet in the darkness of our lovers' bed, bright as sunlight in my memory. I teased with my fingertip
around her little pearl, precious as no jewel could ever be. I traced with my tongue down the track my fingers made and left lip prints around the oasis of her navel. I said her name and she said mine.

I didn't look at her eyes.

I gently parted the curtains of her secret place and pleaded my case. I tasted the setting of that pearl, salty-sweet, sharp without bitterness, a taste so indefinably she. I kneaded the outside of her thighs with the palms of my hands. I heard her sighs and her gasps and her cries. I smiled but I did not watch her eyes.

Afterwards, she lay spooned in my embrace. I twined my ankle like a vine around her calf; I did not want her to wake without my knowing. I did not want her to leave without another glimpse of her goodbye eyes.

"Don't leave me," I whispered. Don't leave me alone with the memory of your voice and your taste and the feel of your skin next to mine and the look in your goodbye eyes.

"I'll never," she lied.