"no, well ... I don't think so."
"okay." I said, and crawled under the covers. He rolled onto his back and left his arm across the pillow and I tucked into the space.
In the morning our feet found each other. He slipped his arm under me, in the the dip just beneath my rib cage, and pulled me into him. He kissed my shoulder. It was sweet and good, the warmth of him there. It was too comfortable to be about us. I found myself in the quiet routine of two people who'd had more than a night.
It was practiced, it was right.
I could feel who'd ever been there before.
It was practiced, it was right.
I could feel who'd ever been there before.
He asked me how he'd slept, and earnestly then, what makes a man bad at sharing the bed. I told him inexperience.
I once ended things with a man I liked very much, and what it came down to was the bed. All night he'd moved me around, just trying his best to do the thing he was supposed to do but never actually sleeping. He wanted to, but he didn't know how. He'd never gone to sleep next to someone night after night, for years.
At twenty seven, we've had time to live out entire little lives with the people who we've loved. Multiple of them, even. I had one in Portland. I had one in Massachusetts. And they ended. But I know now, I know how to sleep next to someone and what to do in those morning hours when two people flicker between sleeping and waking.
I want a man who has learned how to hold a women, before he gets to me.
Even if it's only for a few hours.
A man who can make it feel like love.
This is beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI love this so much, Sam! You sure have a way with words.
ReplyDeleteLOVE.
ReplyDeleteThis is so beautifully written, and I know just exactly what you mean. I remember being very afraid of sharing a space with someone when I was young - the air between walls, the bed that can seem as small as a Post-It, as huge as an ocean. I didn't know how. I was scared of someone else's breath filling the room alongside my own, and of it becoming its own element: different, other, changed. I was afraid of the shapes of someone else's dreams, and the way their bones would arrange and rearrange themselves alongside mine.
ReplyDeleteThen I met someone who knew how, as you write, to hold a woman. Who knew how and where to fit. And sometimes the simplest and most beautiful of intimacies is the holding, at night, when the moon catches its little silver hook on the sill, and the breath slows into its own rolling rhythm like the sea. Or the mornings, when, still half-asleep, you find your way to each other. Just that.
I always love reading your words. There is such beauty and truth in them.
This is beautiful. My ex absolutely hated when I had an arm over him and threw fits about it because of his temper, and even though it's such a small and trivial gesture (or lack thereof), it didn't make me feel loved. My current guy, even though I'm his first, knows exactly what to do and we just fit together so well. I love that feeling.
ReplyDeletebecky ♡ star violet
I like the intimacy of this writing <3
ReplyDelete