In the dark, I’m set free, permitted to your room alone.
You sleep there, on your stomach, with your shirt tossed wayward on the floor and your jeans still stuck to your skin. You sweat, because you feel me here. You sweat, because you know you’ve brought me here.
I watch as you wrestle with the sheets, brow creased, lips moving. You toss and whimper and finally cry out, as a lover might when he sees his lady dying. And it’s my name you shout.
I get in bed with you and rememorize your body. The endless freckles on your tanned face, the scars spattered throughout your skin like code. I fold myself in to the places you wouldn’t dare let anyone go, and I hold your hand, soothing, whispering and soothing endlessly, like a witch mother; full of lies and deceit.
And your dream calms and your breathing calms and your body calms, but your mind is everything but calm. I listen in on your unconscious thoughts, brushing away the hazy spider web of sleep and dipping in your very mind as if slipping into a whirlpool of foaming, angry water.
My eyes. My lips. My hair. My fingers and that one alien toe that is taller than the others. The scar from my bike accident in the third grade. My laugh. My beauty mark on the back of my neck. My nervous habit of biting my nails. My voice. My smile. My frown. My look that tells you I’m happy. My feet as I run towards you after getting off that plane. My stomach, tanned from days in my bikini beside the lake.
These are what you think of when you sleep, the only thing your mind let’s you see. And even though your body is calmed by my presence, your mind continues to torture itself, to see me. To see me laughing. To see my crying. To see me telling you I love you. Over and over and over again.
And I twist myself around you like a cocoon and shelter the sensitive places and fold myself where you wouldn’t dare let anyone go, not even me. And I can feel your twinge of regret as you think of what could have—should have—would have happened.
And the sun starts to rise and I shrink away, until your eyes open and they connect with my eyes. And you blink, and I am gone.
And all day you tell people, “It was like she was really there. It was like every day, waking up beside her. It was like she never really died.”
And you’re alone again.
But just until the night, when it’s dark and I’m set free, permitted to your room alone.