Bryr - Exercise #5

They’re together right now. Where’s my tea? It’s 6:30 in the morning and they have to be. I wish I’d woken up at 9 or 10. Then they might be at breakfast, he might be at work. But maybe they wouldn’t be warm together, skin on skin. But I pulled myself by the hair out of a dream of butterfly proboscises, long fuzzy spirals curling and extending, and back to this limp reality, this damp pillow and sunken bed, at barely 5. Those few precious moments of floating, even a little nauseously, between the slipping dream and the weight of what you haven’t yet recovered about why your face feels bruised and swollen and your chest feels heavy and empty at the same time. Somehow I’d moved to his pillow in the night. So I got out of bed, pulling the blankets behind me, and crawled into the lazy boy in front of the stupid gas fireplace. I think of the way his brows furrow as he sleeps, how improbably beautiful he can be. Never vulnerable, even in sleep. I think of the early months when he could never sleep without touching me, whether his ankle hooked around my calf, or his face pressed into the nape of my neck. Is that where he is now? His breath is on her neck, his fluttering eyelashes tickling the tiny red curls at her nape. His blonde hair is tousled, flat at his temples with sweat. He has only just fallen asleep, before he has even fully caught his breath, and she can feel the rise and fall of his breath against her back. She won’t fall back asleep for a while yet. It’s too delicious to feel him this way, slipped away for awhile, leaving his body behind for her to soak in. She’s got one of his hands tangled in hers, tucked between her breasts. Will she kiss the tip of his thumb? Do the hairs on his forearms stand up in the chill from the open window while his body remains warm and damp next to hers? His thigh is drawn up behind her, and her hand is spread on his hip, that pale expanse of skin that stretches up to his tense and aching lower back. But she doesn’t know how much it hurts him yet. His breath stills for a moment and he stirs. She tightens her grip on his hand and he returns the pressure for an instant before he slips it out and begins to roll away from her. He bunches his pillow under his head and draws up his knees. Clears his throat. He is still but his breath is shallow. She turns her head silently and gazes at the wash of freckles across his back, the gash of scar tissue over his rotator cuff. Only an hour earlier, she’s sunk her teeth into the flesh just below it, dug her nails into the freckled skin, the marks are still there, risen above the surface. She’d like to trace them with the tip of her finger, but she won’t. He won’t be able to fall back asleep. He’ll rise and clear his throat, find his boxers and walk to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. She’ll hear the water running. Then silence. He’ll stand in the door for a moment when he comes back, undecided. Then he’ll begin to redress.