Daniel (Draft)

Earth Angel, Earth Angel, will you be mine?

I love this song. I first heard it at my high school dance, where I had my first kiss and the rest of my life became set. Do you remember that moment for you? When you knew the rest of your life was determined--not exactly that you knew what that life would be, just that the path was set and you're ticket was booked for the ride. That's how I felt that night. The beat of the music, his gentle and cutely awkward sway, the soft touch of lips...it was magical.

I wish Daniel could know how grateful I am for that moment. I wish he could know that he was my first, no, not in the way that most people past a certain age talk about their first, but in the way that your heart always remembers. I never had the chance to tell him how glad I was he decided to save the last dance for himself out of respect for me, and how it made me shine inside even the more to be able to fill that void when I decided to show. I never had the chance to tell him how special he made me feel. I never got the chance to tell him that his singing of the words--

(Earth Angel, Earth Angel, the one I adore)

--while looking into my eyes defined my existence. I never got the chance to tell him I loved him.

And I never will.

I sometimes stare up at the stars and wish the dead and the living could talk. The embroidery of light in the black sky knows my frustrating--billions of stars visible in the same span of two eyes (one when I decide to close one and not the other, which I do often when looking at stars) yet they are cut off from each other by a barrier which I can see, but they cannot. The space between them so small I can put my finger over it, yet so inscrutably intraversable.

This is how I feel. That something so simple as the shutting down of the machine that is the body, as easily done as taking the engine out of car, could cease the development of two lovers. Yes, I loved him before I had the chance to love, beyond the point where he could even be loved.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I miss Daniel. And I always will.

But--

Earth Angel

I smile and look upon the stars again. I close my eyes and put myself back on that dance floor, the perfect moment. I am there again, knowing my haphazardous life has finally clicked into place on a puzzle I can't wait to finish. Knowing the kiss will come, loving when it does. Knowing that he wants to touch me, pull me closer, but he doesn't because he's a gentleman, even when we kiss, he's a gentleman.

I don't think about the end of the song. The end of ends, a thing inevitable for all. I don't think about how when it is over I will have to leave and Daniel will still be there. I don't think about the moment would have defined my life, and how impossible it was for it to then. I don't think about that he can't feel me, or I can't feel him, or that he can't see me. I tell myself he knows I am here. I don't think about how I will have to pass over after the dance, how this will be my last moment. I don't think about the car slamming into my body the day before. These things are out of my mind, because that's what happens when you define your life, even if that life is too late.

All I focus on is Earth Angel, and how that is me.