The
bedside lamp had been on the floor for over an hour, but it was only when ache1
re-entered the room from her pre-sleep toilet she observed the suffusion of
melancholy, and this ambience intensified still further with the extinguishing
of the bathroom light behind her.
Brother
Skunk moved in his sleep, turning over onto his stomach, and she could see his
legs splay out beneath the covers. Standing still with the door at her back,
she remembered how it had been at home, this same low-lighting as she crept
from bedroom to bathroom and back on that stretch of winter pre-dawns when
she’d understudied her sister’s paper-route, the aim then to avoid
waking her parents who through force of habit still slept with their door ajar,
sometimes even navigating the dark void of hallway with a bike-lamp that would
in less than an hour be illuminating the streets as she cycled to the gas
station to make the collection. The memories of such cold where now there was
none. And the role of her sleeping parents fulfilled by this man in the hotel bed, his black hair
like so much dead space spilled upon the pillow.
ache1:
Oh
and
that being all, for with it the recognition of a sadness she would not host,
and thus crossed to the bed with a quick and exaggerated little waddle, causing
his stolen nightshirt to sway from the
drop of her pelvic cradle and its abundance.
Taking
her own pillows from off the floor, where until recently they had supported her
as she read, she arranged between the sheets the much-rehearsed geometry as
would afford most comfort those parts of her body she was all too aware would still
be sore come morning. Then this again in darkness when she realised the lamp to
be outwith her achievable range.
When
her eyes had adjusted to the room’s now curtain-filtered visibility, she placed
a hand gently upon the broken shapes of his hair, combing and separating it
with her fingers.
ache1:
That’s you
and
ache1:
That’s you, handsome daddy. You get those zeds in
and
then the waiting.
