Unwinding

How he got there he couldn't say, but the moon above was half full, the morning not yet broken, and his heart restless. Sleep was a distant memory. Only the smell of grass and the song of wild birds fed his wandering. How could he want something so deeply that it colored every thought, movement, word? Yet he could never have what he so desired. It was the longing, unrequited, ongoing, feeding itself with its own hunger, that drove him out of his solitude, into his undoing. Having lived so long alone, his skin went hot with the nearness of others. The coils of protection loosened slowly, oh so slowly, and he withstood the reflex to run, to extinguish the rushes of love that flowed through him like a river in flood.