When I opened my eyes
I watched a glaze of light slowly bleed into our room, through your white, acrylic curtain,
and
it made me so sad to see you there,
looking like a child,
laying
with splayed out hair.
We all revert to children when we rest.
Our bodies coiled and our spines compressed.
It made me sad because I know you’ll wake up and you’ll offer me tea
and we’ll have to pretend like we’re adults.
Because, as you say, “we are now adults.”
And I know that every moment
you push me away from the children we are,
the base line animal, that needs to play,
you hurt me,
you tame me and claim me.
And I know, as you lay fetally
and as drool spills from your tender parted lips ever so gently
I know that your brain is alive and buzzing
with everything that I love about you
I know in your head
there are elegant, electric eels -
circling each other, whispering beautiful things,
and there are
imperious lions confessing their sins in their dens
and there is dazzling light
and there is drizzling snow,
and you are standing on the mountain that we climbed
when we were twenty two -
you are laughing
and I am too.
Yet you will wake up,
and offer me tea,
and walk the dog by yourself,
and reorganise your bookshelf -
even the crumbs we used to hold in interlaced hands
are stored away
in the attic cupboard
next to the slightly chipped China and
old VHS tapes we can no longer play, and
the tattered takeout menus that I keep just to know they are there..
In that attic, too, there is a picture,
obscured on the edges by a patting of dust.
It is a picture of a stormy beach front,
Sky torrential grey.
It is
a picture of a palm tree bending,
a picture of the water -
a picture of the wave
rising high towards the shore.
And I remember taking it,
the wind beating against my eardrum.
I remember you sitting in the car
with your arms crossed.
Sometimes I look at that picture,
and I
imagine that wave ripping and rolling
everything away
Layer by layer.
Leaving purely a vast expanse -
an arctic desert;
And in the centre
is your pristine white marble table
(The one that we paid for together.)
And this is why I can only love you in your sleep.
Why, when you wake up
and you offer me tea,
I will say no.
Why I push you away,
Telling you I’m just too warm.
Why I wake up an hour before you
just to breathe before you do.
To feel like I have something you don’t.
To feel I’ve won something you won’t.
and to briefly love you
without a note
of regret.
