Contrasts (completed)

... don't think about it anymore; focus on the good times. There were good times... right?

*****
Some time later I come awake with my arm tucked under the crook of her neck and watch the dawn light diffusing in softly through the glass panes, caressing her edge of her face and creating a ghostly pale glow around the contours of her cheek, her temple and her nose, the rest of her fair, fair skin encased in grey shadow. And then those eyes - dark, dark, eyes, almost doll-like and so very alive - flutter open, and her lips twitch into a smile as I say Good Morning, then lean forwards to kiss them, and I feel... an almost wondrous joy.

*****
I remember I used to think when people asked each other "what do you really, really want in life?" that the answer "to be happy" was too simple, too trite for me. That I was different and needed something... more substantial. I used to think I just needed the truth, and that happiness was irrelevant to me.

Catch me now : ten years down the line, a little battered, edges worn down, paintwork a little scuffed and how I've changed. I just want to be happy now, too.

*****
Every hello? on the line a... leap... an unexpected but welcome surprise.
Every parting... reluctant, an almost sense of... loss.
Every meeting, a wonder.

Not a distant memory from over a decade ago of the mafia don and mafiassimo... but a moment in the here and now, between Doctor Whiskers and the Assassin.