me neither
I look down the length of us to find the evidence of life beneath these blankets: your two peach feet with toes slightly curling into themselves; the soft padding of each foot’s tenuous fibers with delicate bones and veins leading and ending at the beginning of each toe. One is tucked beneath an ankle and the other is dangling flaccidly from the foot of the bed.
Light is finding its way thru gaps in the curtains, I’ve watched as the night has progressed from black to blue and violet to gray then orange from yellow and to the eventual white. Four shapes reflect themselves onto the covers in a stream of light, I run my hand thru the sun to make shadows: a duck, a peace sign, a “go fuck yourself” finger; I lightheartedly laugh. My laughter wakes you and you turn a sleepy smile my way before turning back into me; a scruffy cheek dug into my shoulder, you like an oversized infant, drunk from sleep, peaceful and content and innocent looking.
Your hair’s in mats; dark and thick, poking every which way, making you look like a little sea creature who’s played in the sand and surf all day and left the salt to settle stiff and dramatic in its hair. Your t-shirt is twisted all about you, only the A and TRK of “AMTRAK” readable thru all the cotton wrinkles. I’ve considered waking you up several times thru the night to twist it off you or at least roll you over in a different direction to smooth it out. You always appeared so oblivious and statuesque that I could never disturb you. Your shirt makes me wonder if you’re dreaming and if so, where you may possibly be in the world other than beside me, tangled in your clothing for the moment.
I’ve been awake from a night of semi sleep since daybreak, dying to see numbers on a clock, to know what time it is; where I am in the scheme of a day. Like my father, I wake nightly, sometimes on the hour, to note the hands on the wall, to do the quick backward arithmetic of how much sleep I can still escape with.
In a few minutes I will impatiently rise, scoot myself from the corner and attempt to slide beneath the thick down cover and onto the floor without jostling you into consciousness. I hear you make a sleepy grunt and turn to your side as I am rubbing my eyes and noticing I’ve lost a sock on my way to the bathroom. One of your roommates is up making tea and I stick my head in to whisper a “good morning” to her before treading lightly back inside and silently closing the door of your room to its frame.
There’s no chance I’ll slink back into bed without a distraction, my mind’s too full of last night’s dreaming, plans for the day and the story of the man on the plane which I forgot to tell you last night. I think of pouncing on you, sitting on your back and squishing you into a reluctant early morning awakening but think better of it and instead, run my finger along the spines of your books, scanning which ones are in my language and not of the political non fiction variety. In addition to being an avid animal hater, I am a shameless judger of books by their covers and so aesthetically settle on a smooth edged black novel with a portrait of an eerie female statue with odd hands in a mystical graveyard.
I slither in behind you, feel around with my foot for the missing sock, cannot find it and so bring my knees and the book closer to me and to you and breathe in the warmth of your neck and back. You’ll be giving me a kind and gracious scolding when you find that I am already awake; so far your little whimsical plans of waking me to music and coffee have worked out more to the tune of me finally waking your comatose ass with my cold feet to ask something about the book I’m reading or to drill you first thing on the dreams you saw before they slip and you’ve forgotten them.
I think you’re waking, you mumble something deep and unintelligible, it rumbles gruffly from inside your chest, I smile because I don’t think what you said was in English. I reach for your hair, twist it round in little knots that escape my hand, say “What was that, babe?” You turn to me, squeak “Good morning,” and sigh. I tell you it’s about time, that you’ve been torturing me with your sleep all morning, and that I dreamed of you and me and a desert somewhere in Arizona. “You did? That’s perfect.” My legs are lazily criss-crossed onto yours, the socked foot in the open air and the other tucked beneath the sheet.
You like to talk in mornings, only with your eyes closed and hands around me or behind your head as if still in a dreamlike sequence. I’m convinced you could remain in bed, completely still, fully awake for an entire day without the necessary distractions that I would require. But I’m restless. I need to move and to stretch and hear music. I reach past you to the thin curtain, let in a stream of light so bright that even I, who’s been up for 45 minutes, squint at. The sky is white and cloudless, no doubt the day will be chilly-we will take only a walk up the hill today-I tease you by blinding you with light from the window every time you try to close your eyes. You laugh and punch me in the arm; a weak punch reserved only for lovers, and I stab you in the ribcage with my toe, digging into it until you’re for sure awake and all mine.
We lie for some time more until I admit coffee does sound nice and you warn me to stay in bed, not to move while scuffling to the record player, thru the hallway and into the kitchen. A faint cough makes its way past the walls and soon I hear the grinding hum of an espresso machine and the chink of lifted coffee cups. I obediently lie in bed; pleased by my fate, recalling a letter you wrote to me once, scribbled on the pages of envelopes and loose papers: “If you let me be by your side, I will be very good to you.”
A raw, soulful male voice resonates and crackles thru the speakers, singing a declarative, “I ain’t about to go strayin’…”
Me neither.
Light is finding its way thru gaps in the curtains, I’ve watched as the night has progressed from black to blue and violet to gray then orange from yellow and to the eventual white. Four shapes reflect themselves onto the covers in a stream of light, I run my hand thru the sun to make shadows: a duck, a peace sign, a “go fuck yourself” finger; I lightheartedly laugh. My laughter wakes you and you turn a sleepy smile my way before turning back into me; a scruffy cheek dug into my shoulder, you like an oversized infant, drunk from sleep, peaceful and content and innocent looking.
Your hair’s in mats; dark and thick, poking every which way, making you look like a little sea creature who’s played in the sand and surf all day and left the salt to settle stiff and dramatic in its hair. Your t-shirt is twisted all about you, only the A and TRK of “AMTRAK” readable thru all the cotton wrinkles. I’ve considered waking you up several times thru the night to twist it off you or at least roll you over in a different direction to smooth it out. You always appeared so oblivious and statuesque that I could never disturb you. Your shirt makes me wonder if you’re dreaming and if so, where you may possibly be in the world other than beside me, tangled in your clothing for the moment.
I’ve been awake from a night of semi sleep since daybreak, dying to see numbers on a clock, to know what time it is; where I am in the scheme of a day. Like my father, I wake nightly, sometimes on the hour, to note the hands on the wall, to do the quick backward arithmetic of how much sleep I can still escape with.
In a few minutes I will impatiently rise, scoot myself from the corner and attempt to slide beneath the thick down cover and onto the floor without jostling you into consciousness. I hear you make a sleepy grunt and turn to your side as I am rubbing my eyes and noticing I’ve lost a sock on my way to the bathroom. One of your roommates is up making tea and I stick my head in to whisper a “good morning” to her before treading lightly back inside and silently closing the door of your room to its frame.
There’s no chance I’ll slink back into bed without a distraction, my mind’s too full of last night’s dreaming, plans for the day and the story of the man on the plane which I forgot to tell you last night. I think of pouncing on you, sitting on your back and squishing you into a reluctant early morning awakening but think better of it and instead, run my finger along the spines of your books, scanning which ones are in my language and not of the political non fiction variety. In addition to being an avid animal hater, I am a shameless judger of books by their covers and so aesthetically settle on a smooth edged black novel with a portrait of an eerie female statue with odd hands in a mystical graveyard.
I slither in behind you, feel around with my foot for the missing sock, cannot find it and so bring my knees and the book closer to me and to you and breathe in the warmth of your neck and back. You’ll be giving me a kind and gracious scolding when you find that I am already awake; so far your little whimsical plans of waking me to music and coffee have worked out more to the tune of me finally waking your comatose ass with my cold feet to ask something about the book I’m reading or to drill you first thing on the dreams you saw before they slip and you’ve forgotten them.
I think you’re waking, you mumble something deep and unintelligible, it rumbles gruffly from inside your chest, I smile because I don’t think what you said was in English. I reach for your hair, twist it round in little knots that escape my hand, say “What was that, babe?” You turn to me, squeak “Good morning,” and sigh. I tell you it’s about time, that you’ve been torturing me with your sleep all morning, and that I dreamed of you and me and a desert somewhere in Arizona. “You did? That’s perfect.” My legs are lazily criss-crossed onto yours, the socked foot in the open air and the other tucked beneath the sheet.
You like to talk in mornings, only with your eyes closed and hands around me or behind your head as if still in a dreamlike sequence. I’m convinced you could remain in bed, completely still, fully awake for an entire day without the necessary distractions that I would require. But I’m restless. I need to move and to stretch and hear music. I reach past you to the thin curtain, let in a stream of light so bright that even I, who’s been up for 45 minutes, squint at. The sky is white and cloudless, no doubt the day will be chilly-we will take only a walk up the hill today-I tease you by blinding you with light from the window every time you try to close your eyes. You laugh and punch me in the arm; a weak punch reserved only for lovers, and I stab you in the ribcage with my toe, digging into it until you’re for sure awake and all mine.
We lie for some time more until I admit coffee does sound nice and you warn me to stay in bed, not to move while scuffling to the record player, thru the hallway and into the kitchen. A faint cough makes its way past the walls and soon I hear the grinding hum of an espresso machine and the chink of lifted coffee cups. I obediently lie in bed; pleased by my fate, recalling a letter you wrote to me once, scribbled on the pages of envelopes and loose papers: “If you let me be by your side, I will be very good to you.”
A raw, soulful male voice resonates and crackles thru the speakers, singing a declarative, “I ain’t about to go strayin’…”
Me neither.