- In the dim light of the 10 am living room, you looked like you had been to breakfast with wolves as you walked in. It’s been a while. And I couldn’t help but give you my good morning. Your right cheek, red from my spontaneous greeting, is foreign to the pale skin that engulfs you, pale arms you engulf me with. I am pale too. And I was sorry for being too atrocious.
- Warm afternoons in your quiet room. We often complain of how little wind passes through your curtained jalousie windows. It was the peak of summer. Our cheeks were the insipid scarlet sky at sunset against the pine green wall reflected in our eyes. You look at me with brown eyes. I look at you with brown too. And you said my browns are beautiful.
- We can spend the whole day in dirty sheets and inside out pillows. Our feet intertwined for hours in your bed. I was wearing your favorite shirt. Page 144. You kissed me, then went back to pretending you were Altair, and I would kiss you. You’d get distracted, you’d die. Or fall. Thank God for checkpoints.
- We would eat lunch without a word, just the clicking of metal against ceramic. In the wooden round table in the left corner of the kitchen, beside the open window, (We hated the table in the dining room. It was too long and empty.) there are times we sit across each other, but oftentimes, we sit too close – close enough that our knees touch, close enough for the occasional tap of your hand on my thigh. We would just look at each other. Or smile – sometimes. Because we never needed words.
- I would always play with your hair, twist it around my fingers. My nails were red. Just like the wall where your clock hangs. You filled that wall with photos I never knew you took. There was this photo of me sleeping. Half of my face buried in your pillow. And you’re chin rests on my shoulder. That mischievous smile.
- You would always kiss my back, my spine, the nape of my neck. Sometimes you would fall asleep and you would get so heavy I’ll wake you up even if I don’t want to. Because I like the way you sleep. And the way you blink when you hurt your eyes after you put your contacts on.
- There are nights we’d turn the lights off and lie on our backs, looking up at the ceiling, pretending it was the night sky. It was too cloudy we can’t see the stars. But it didn’t matter. We knew where they were. Then we’ll start pretending they were there, tracing constellations with our fingers, owning stars that were never ours.
- The day I showed up at your door with a sprained ankle, you carried me to bed. You whined of how heavy I was. I told you you can put me down, but you insisted. Your thirteen cats were following us, curious, waiting for a story why I ended up that way. The fourteenth was missing. We called for her. But she was already on the bed, and jumped off as you laid me down. That was the first time you, I, and all the cats were together.
- Sometimes we’d go for a drive and our routine soda. You would smoke and I would watch you exhale the negativities of the day – the neighbor’s noisy Labrador, the could have been win of Boston, the argument you had with your mother, the burnt milkfish we had for supper – trying to forget them as the smoke marries the air above us. You don’t want me smoking.
- We’d do things together and it wasn’t suffocating. Well, you always did the dishes alone. And I would always watch you, and you would look at me through the mirror by the kitchen sink. Your fixed stare, the sound of the rushing water, your back turned to me – an invitation to embrace you, which I accepted most of the time. And the times that I didn’t, I'd go to your room, picture your fixed stare, the rushing water, your back. And you would show up, done with the dishes. And I'd hug you tighter than when I do in the kitchen.
- Distance is really tricky, I guess. Because we were so perfect. That’s how fictional we were.
mar 25 2012 ∞
jun 4 2012 +