You, a man, stretch out this moment to feel almost like a lifetime. The way you describe feelings for this woman is as though you've shared blood with her. You've lived in each of her breaths and attempt to claw your way back into her lungs with each necessary exhale. This is an amazing piece. Very nice.
There's something beautiful in the way she sleeps. Her eyes are tender, rimmed with fanned lashes that speak of tiny secrets kept safe behind closed lids. I'll never tell, but honestly I'd like to pry them apart and delve into the world in which she dreams. You'd call me a thief, but I swear I just want to walk upon her cerebral path, and tread affectionately into the gardens of her mind. It's there I've smelled the lush of wild roses and admired the way the wind blows when it's caught in the fire of her hair. It was in tired arms that I watched her breathe beneath the eyes of the moon. Every breath she made was a small tune playing against the hollow of my ribs. If you listen, you'll hear that even in the quiet she composes an orchestra between her lips. This is how I know, where I learn, what it means to lose it all - to give it all. It's only in the bare bones of the night that she rests her eyes, and unknowingly she cradles every hope and forsaken dream I've ever made. She's casting wishing stone upon wishing stone and my abdomen curls. It's nights like these where I am on bend and knee at her side and she'll never know as I count the spaces between her sighs. I am just a man caught in a moment and there's no place else I'd rather be. I am just a lost voyager, sailing across the outstretched forests of her uncharted dreams.
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Nope. Nothing to say. Sure, I could nit-pick and find a bit here and there that might be tweaked to flow better, but why bother? The flow is brilliant and you've so perfectly encapsulated this moment to me. This is how it is to look upon someone you love -- be they a friend, lover, or even a child -- as they are sleeping. Your imagery is beautiful.
There's this one line that just keeps sticking out to me -- the way you used "lush" is just-short of perfect (and only because I refuse to call anything perfect). There are little things, as far as flow, that could be smoothed out here and there -- longer sentences you might want to play with breaking up. Pay attention to the length of the sentence versus the length of the piece -- if it's to remain a prose piece this short, you really shouldn't need any semi-colons, for example (although you use them well when you do). You've not enough weight for such complex sentence forms. I realize this is a rather idiosyncratic way to look at prose formation, but this is my review. Bygones.
If anything, this would be lovely if drawn out further. You've got several layers here -- the garden, music, and the physical layer of two people lying together. To see each drawn out and more exposed would really extend this piece into something more substantial.
As it is, I almost think it might be better as a poem than as a prose piece -- if not expanded. Even as a vignette it only teases a certain depth I know it's capable of achieving. Personally I'd love to see it in a fuller form, but I'd also like to see what could be done with it poetically as is.
In short, it is perhaps the perfect thought stream, in the sense that you had an idea which has the potential to travel in many different directions and be expressed in so many different forms. As it is, it was a joy to read. As much as you might read works of love, this was a refreshing read that didn't tread the same worn paths.
