here's to the night

Those glimmering nights, as translucent and effervescent as champagne bubbles; where laughter was free and salvation assured. 

I am beautiful now but I enjoyed my beauty then, the golden glamour and the dark-lined lashes giving me the confidence to flutter and smile as I wound my lover around my little finger, secure in the knowledge that he liked it there.

Does she love you the way that I did? 

Windows down in the car, the warm summer night whistling through...the glow of the cigarettes and the burble of the water bottles...it was never enough, but it was never lacking either. 

Slamming doors were a happy sound then - they signaled arrivals and new opportunities, new kisses, new music. 

The flash and sparkle was not confined to crystal...they sparked among us, our conversation, our laughter, our glances were enough.

I'm tired of asking...never tired of remembering...until I wake up in the enveloping darkness, shaken from those glorious dreams of what truly happened...I wake with a sense of having been falling, and clutch at the sheets and gasp to find I'm lying still, that I'm alone, and no one is holding my hand.

I turn over and feel my heart burn within my chest, and I remind myself that the pain means that I'm still alive - like frostbite, where there is pain, there is hope.

I close my eyes but the visions come back; that is no longer my life - just something I used to know.