March 28, 2002 | 1:28 AM

There are moments in life so significant and intense that they live forever in your body. They course through your veins masquerading as red blood cells. They ripple up your spine like coins tossed in a wishing well. Your voice catches on them as though snagging on a nail.

You cannot wrap words around such moments. You cannot protect yourself from them.

His green gray eyes glowing in the foyer.

Catching me off guard with his demands and his confessions and his needy shaky hands and his mouth blooming like a new bruise.

The words escape his lips like prisoners of war through a barbed wire fence.

A mere moment.

2 AM on a Wednesday morning.

And I say,

You have to go home. You have to go home now.

It�s a fucking wonder I got out of there alive.

No more. Do you hear me?

No fucking more.

What gives you the right to treat my heart like a crawl space you can burrow in any time you feel like it, and then pretend that nothing happened. You are such a fucking coward.

I�ll never know love like in the movies. All of my love is a long dull ache.