When I lay next to you, no matter where it is, I place my head on your chest. It’s the closest you’ll let our bodies connect. Because I’m the only one in love. I know you cannot be persuaded by the gentle persuasion of kiss and suggestive touch, so I just lay with you. I know you allow it because you value intimacy, but what you allow is clouded by the unknowing of where your want ends and mine begins. But when I’m here I can feel you. I feel you as you slip away. It saddens me because the place you go is too far for me to help. Maybe you go back to the desert and you see all the things that I wish you never had to see. And I lay there. I wait until you come back to me. I wait until the moment you ask me about the future. I wait until you say where do you want to go, and I answer that I want to go with you into that place that scares you. I want you to take me there, and in all the stubbornness you have we can show that place that you’ve found happiness and this is your last visit. But when I lay on your chest I hear you and I remember that I’ve escaped into a place of my own. A place where I’ve falsely persuaded myself I can give you gentle kiss and touch and that I can be happiness enough for you. When I come to it I talk, and you listen. Somehow in your chest I can hear you listen. And before it is all over I whisper in your ear where do you go when you go quiet, Lazarus?