7:30 in the morning and the alarm blares, the insistent annoyance of something better left forgotten. I turned it off, hurriedly, vexed, content in an embrace of tangled legs and arms and heads, pressed so close that my breath was another’s breath and vice versa. Coinciding. Happy. Yes, I believe that was a moment of pure happiness, half asleep, half aware, in the arms of someone who I love with the fierceness of first love and all the passion of the ephemeral. I do not know where he begins but I open my eyes and from that angle, pressed into his shoulder, I can see his lips and the early morning light is tired, straining, but those lips are perfect and in clarity. I can hear his heartbeat as I fall into a daze of half-sleep—
The alarm begins anew.
It takes a tremendous amount of strength to find the will to escape his embrace to stumble through the dim morning toward the bathroom, haphazardly journeying over clothes and backpacks and chairs. I wonder why it seems as though this time has been so long and yet so brief. It has been eight days, each night next to this young man with those perfect lips, and now he is stirring in my wake. When I come back to the bed my things are packed and he has rearranged himself in order to claim the entirety of the mattress, sprawled out, haphazard, across the knotted camouflage sheets.
Why are people so beautiful when they sleep? I almost feel as though I should not wake him and then quickly change my mind. I cross the room, so quiet, and press my hand against his side until he stirs. I lean to tell him that I must leave and he pulls me into him, onto the bed, and I am tucked into his arms and my head is just above his, the top of his skull sharp into the bottom of my jaw, his mouth pressed into the hollow of my throat. There is nothing erotic here. “I have to go.”
“No.” With sleep, his voice is a whine. I am weak with it, with my want to stay. Why do I have to go? Why do I have to go home? Why can’t eight days be enough? I cannot bring myself to pull away—I reach my arms around him and feel the steady pulse of life, of breath, of heartbeat. His eyes are still heavy with slumber and when he looks at me a part of my heart is already breaking because this is only the beginning of goodbyes.
I don’t want to go. There is a sort of ignorance to my happiness, a sort of naivety here in this bed that I have not felt since childhood. A sort of softness that I have never known, a sort of safety that comes from sight and scent and taste and touch. This young man makes me feel so safe, tucked into him, and all I can think of is the warmth and of how when I go back to my alleged home I will again be unhappy, I will be uncomfortable, I will be a piece that does not fit. I say none of that. I just disengage myself, with all the strength I have. He sits up after me, still blurry-eyed.
I think, for a moment, that in his eyes I must be a dream. He tells me to be safe and gives me a kiss that I will not forget for years, and maybe not even then. It is the sort of thing that is so tender it is difficult to recover from.
It was the sort of night where we had slept crammed together, elbows into ribs, heads against necks, shoulders touching chests, legs tangled, feet curled, hands knotted, despite the heat and despite the mild discomfort. I still felt a part of that even once I was in my car, driving through the desert to a home that I did not miss in the mountains that were a part of me. The absence was profound, the imprint of his skin like a brand to my body. Be safe, be safe. Those words echoed in my head as I glanced out my window, into green green fields where horses chased one another and houses popped unexpectedly among the trees where they did not belong.
On the drive home I had an argument with my mother—I broke a bit and screamed the truth. ‘YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE SHIT YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE SHIT YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE SHIT” until she listened to the words themselves and I hung up the phone and then returned to a plethora of broken promises and dead ends. Why does “home” taste like whiskey and smell like cigarette smoke?
7:30 in the morning and the alarm blares, the insistent annoyance of something better left forgotten. I turned it off, hurriedly, vexed, content in an embrace of tangled legs and arms and heads, pressed so close that my breath was another’s breath and vice versa. Coinciding. Happy. Yes, I believe that was a moment of pure happiness, half asleep, half aware, in the arms of someone who I love with the fierceness of first love and all the passion of the ephemeral. I do not know where he begins but I open my eyes and from that angle, pressed into his shoulder, I can see his lips and the early morning light is tired, straining, but those lips are perfect and in clarity. I can hear his heartbeat as I fall into a daze of half-sleep—
The alarm begins anew.
It takes a tremendous amount of strength to find the will to escape his embrace to stumble through the dim morning toward the bathroom, haphazardly journeying over clothes and backpacks and chairs. I wonder why it seems as though this time has been so long and yet so brief. It has been eight days, each night next to this young man with those perfect lips, and now he is stirring in my wake. When I come back to the bed my things are packed and he has rearranged himself in order to claim the entirety of the mattress, sprawled out, haphazard, across the knotted camouflage sheets.
Why are people so beautiful when they sleep? I almost feel as though I should not wake him and then quickly change my mind. I cross the room, so quiet, and press my hand against his side until he stirs. I lean to tell him that I must leave and he pulls me into him, onto the bed, and I am tucked into his arms and my head is just above his, the top of his skull sharp into the bottom of my jaw, his mouth pressed into the hollow of my throat. There is nothing erotic here. “I have to go.”
“No.” With sleep, his voice is a whine. I am weak with it, with my want to stay. Why do I have to go? Why do I have to go home? Why can’t eight days be enough? I cannot bring myself to pull away—I reach my arms around him and feel the steady pulse of life, of breath, of heartbeat. His eyes are still heavy with slumber and when he looks at me a part of my heart is already breaking because this is only the beginning of goodbyes.
I don’t want to go. There is a sort of ignorance to my happiness, a sort of naivety here in this bed that I have not felt since childhood. A sort of softness that I have never known, a sort of safety that comes from sight and scent and taste and touch. This young man makes me feel so safe, tucked into him, and all I can think of is the warmth and of how when I go back to my alleged home I will again be unhappy, I will be uncomfortable, I will be a piece that does not fit. I say none of that. I just disengage myself, with all the strength I have. He sits up after me, still blurry-eyed.
I think, for a moment, that in his eyes I must be a dream. He tells me to be safe and gives me a kiss that I will not forget for years, and maybe not even then. It is the sort of thing that is so tender it is difficult to recover from.
It was the sort of night where we had slept crammed together, elbows into ribs, heads against necks, shoulders touching chests, legs tangled, feet curled, hands knotted, despite the heat and despite the mild discomfort. I still felt a part of that even once I was in my car, driving through the desert to a home that I did not miss in the mountains that were a part of me. The absence was profound, the imprint of his skin like a brand to my body. Be safe, be safe. Those words echoed in my head as I glanced out my window, into green green fields where horses chased one another and houses popped unexpectedly among the trees where they did not belong.
On the drive home I had an argument with my mother—I broke a bit and screamed the truth. ‘YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE SHIT YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE SHIT YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE SHIT” until she listened to the words themselves and I hung up the phone and then returned to a plethora of broken promises and dead ends. Why does “home” taste like whiskey and smell like cigarette smoke?
Be safe.