Ailments

 

No...no.  Her voice was muffled as he stood over her, her face buried in a pillow already a bit wet from fever, her hair scattered across it and the covers pulled up to her neck.

I need to take your temperature he said, one hand on the mattress...he was above her, had left her alone after she woke up early complaining of a sore throat and potential fever...but it had broken and now he just needed to know if she had something simple or yet another fucking Covid positive reaction.

Look, if you want I'll pull up the covers from below and just stick it in your butt.

Her head turned slightly...no fucking way came out from her muffled voice.  She turned further to face him, her cheeks a bit scarlet and stuck out her tongue.  

He started to move towards her with the thermometer...

wait she said...I'll do it myself...don't want you screwing up putting it in my mouth.

That really hasn't been a problem in the past he smiled.

You're not made of glass and mercury dumbass...she took the thermometer and pulled it into her lips.

She said something but he couldn't understand.  She pulled out the thermometer....don't make this sexual.

He left the room to let her be.

He brewed tea for her...Green and then maybe Chamomile as they both were softest on her throat...he thought about broaching her taking a Covid test but then decided he'd wait...she had plans...travel, friends, etc and he decided how she was treated, regardless of ailment, was the most important thing he could do.

He also brewed up some chicken soup, deciding if he was going to become a cliche he was going to go all in...that she would need some protein.

He also ordered a bunch of Pedialyte from an online delivery store...he felt like he was covering all his bases.

He walked back in.

101.

Really?

Yeah...she held up the thermometer like an offending object and rolled back over on her stomach.

I brought you some tea...and...some soup.

Soup?

uhm, yeah...chicken noodle?

For breakfast?

I thought it would be easier on your throat if it was sore.

Is that a sexual joke again?

Actually no...but now that I think about it I wish I could have delivered it with a bit better flair...but it's hard to talk to the back of your head.

She rolled onto her back...her hair in her face, a bit dampened with sweat.  The sides of her nostrils were red and her voice sounded like gravel.  But to him she exuded a grace and an elegance...adorned in a nightgown and high cotton covers, she was like a furled up flower.

Better? she posed.

Yes...so here...he brought forward the tea...he plumped up another pillow and as she raised up he placed it behind her.  Better? he posed.

She nodded, taking the tea and take slight sips...she winced a little, hinting at the soreness in her throat but it seemed to also sooth at the same time.  

He looked at the cup of soup, steaming in the morning air.

Do you think you want something to eat?

Again she just shook her head no, holding the tea with both hands...

okay, why don't I let you try to get back to sleep.  Again, a nod...thank you she uttered...a faint hint of her normal lilt.  He nodded back and walked backwards out the door, making sure he watched her the whole way so she knew he was watching her.  Over her.

He checked on her a few minutes later...she was asleep, her hand holding the empty cup on top of the covers...she was breathing normally and her hair was sweatier than before.  He went over and quietly moved the cup out of her hand...she murmured a little and he bent over her and kissed her where her hairline met her forehead...it was salty.  He had tasted the salt of her in his past, knew it like a fragrance and spoke against her skin to go back to sleep...she nodded slightly, turned from him and put her face down into the pillows.  He pulled up the covers as far as he could and left her, padding her where he imagined her ass was beneath the blankets.  

His phone dinged with a text.  He reached for it.

You can come in now.  It was from her.

After leaving her asleep he had gone to the store and gotten her sunflowers freshly cut, large like two feet in height...he also got her Virginia peanuts and salty caramel chocolate. He added some chocolate ice cream.  And then waited.

He entered the doorway with the flowers and the bag of food...she was sitting up in the bed, the scarlet in the cheeks subsided...her hair was dry and the covers were around her waist.  Her eyes were shining and he knew she felt better.

Where the fuck is my soup?

She smiled and he knew that she definitely felt better.

He placed the bag next to her and put the flowers along the bedside.

I'll go get it.

Wait...she patted the bed next to her.  He walked over and sat.  Her eyes went back and forth to his...they were alive...and she held up her mouth to him.  He placed his on hers, just letting gravity compress them...meeting in an alignment...nothing sexual but also nothing benign...it was like a human moment, and intimate.  He pulled back.

Thank you she said, her voice much better.

He nodded...anytime.

Breaking the Fast

 It starts inexorably slowly...the way the light in the room subtly leaks like a spill of a whiteness, the flickering of eyelids and the quietness that remains.

Untangling from you, covered in layers of cottons and you pull away and turn to the other side and continue to slumber...it is actually my favorite part of the start...not because I am pulling away but because I spent the entirety of the evening alongside of you and I get to do it again in a few hours.

I can usually tell the hour by the height of the sun behind the trees...before 7 it hasn't risen above them...after 7 it has...it is rare that I miss that window unless it's raining and clouds prevent that sun-clock..

The long pad into the kitchen...my feet quiet and the house feels like itself is still trying to remain asleep...no lights, no noises...

The smell of coffee brewing is the first hint that the evening is over...there is a specific brew that you enjoy and I usually have to go to multiple stores before I find the rare brand...but that little effort, that tiniest of gestures is just a reminder for you.

I usually get about half an hour alone before you emerge and I usually try to stay still and listen to the morning from the screened in porch...the roosters from a nearby farm announcing that it is time to get up...a donkey brays and slowly, like the stretch of a cat...the day begins.

I love the waking you...the tussled hair, the slow blink of your eyes, the husk in your voice...the way you come at me in a straight-line to accept your cup and then kiss me softly...you are not quite fully awake, what the military would call Before Morning Nautical Twilight...your cotton shirt hanging so...

You drink with both hands, pulling it up to your mouth and sipping...you glance outside to the outdoor kitchen where I have started several slices of bacon and you arch your eyebrow a bit.

BLTs is all I say and you smile behind the cup.

I've already also turned on the Sonos...finding the Gregory Alan Isokov channel and his familiar folksy voice becomes the soundtrack to our daybreak.

I am outside tending to the skillet of sizzling bacon and I feel you come up behind me, one arm around my front and you rest your chin on my shoulder...you smell of sleep and coffee and I know that in a few minutes your mind will take over and you'll get caught up in your day.

But for now...in this sweet quiet moment we are intertwined again, wanting to merely pause the sweep of the minute hand on the clock and feel the rhythm of your breathing against me.

daguerreotype

I've been looking so long at these pictures of you
That I almost believe that they're real
I've been living so long with my pictures of you
That I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel

-The Cure

He stumbled upon a picture of her...like encountering her on a sunny side of the street...full daylight and there she was...instantaneous...unfiltered.  

Endorphins, as though the plunge of a needle of adrenalin was suddenly inserted directly into his mind.  And every closeted and dusted emotion spilled out of the drains in his mind and flooded...it was almost painful in the poignancy of his dust-bin world piling upon itself in a matter of seconds...

Her.

The dismal secret is that she remained so photogenic in his memories...and remained so with the proof in the picture...a casual pirate-smile that resembled the crescent moon in a sunrise...a sky the color of dreamsicle...a taste he had never possessed but only imagined.

Until it happened.  

The briefest of encounters, an exception that proves the rule...the reason songs are written and poems mouthed.

A tussle, if you will, a coming together.  An earnestness...a revealing.

But in the collision of humans it was disruptive...it jarred a bit of him to wander free...a tiny piece that had been a part of him prior and was now in the wake of her in an afterwards...floating in a bloodstream and unable to capture or return.  

It infiltrated his dreams...and in certain songs.  The memory of her smudged upon him like a surreptitious bit of lipstick stolen at a party kiss...and it wouldn't come off despite valiant attempts.  

All he knew was when her image appeared in the picture he was unprepared for his response...the sudden  stoppage of his breathing and the heavy cluster in his chest.  

He think she was satisfied with him...in an unexpected way...not like a stranger but rather as a familiar...a comfort who she could confide in, allow herself to immerse and connect at an unvarnished level...no pretense...just presence and a moment or two.  Alone.

Flint like.  Sparks and such.

Not usually experienced and unexpected...

The way Civil War portraits captured an image but couldn't quite capture the person...he carried her image and reacted to her picture knowing full well it would never be adequate to quite capture her.

 

Another Summer

 He felt that Summer was her true season, a least when she could show her skin, mix in some colors and allow her tan lines to show where something else had touched her...seared into her and left its mark.

Sun drenched.

They had met in a winter, covered in clothes and layers and she had allowed only a very tiny, slow unveiling as the days barely got warmer...a glacial pace of revealings...mostly thoughts, some paragraphs of words...utterances...and definitely not skin.

But they both loved the beach...and this intersection of places allowed him to imagine...and he set his mind on becoming a bit of sand in her shoe, a slight irritant but present and lingering...and hoping it might turn into a pearl vs. something causing her to stop, take off her sandals and shake them until he tumbled back to earth.

In the warmth of the cumulus of the sea salt air, the strands of her hair found new life and directions...forming lovely contrails that surrounded her face and danced and moved like tides...

and she remained mystery-like as he began to know her, like the shimmering air above a highway baked in the sun...what shape, what structure...hurtling towards a spot in the road and upon arrival there is only the colors of the...road.

There are longer hours in a summer day...the slow spoil into an evening...the way the world devolves into a color that is closer to the color of her eyes.  The sounds of cicadas buzz-sawing into the night air...a random firefly...a splinter of a moon.

And there are storms and dust-ups that randomly occur...but for them, it wasn't ever cataclysmic....rather it was smoldering...maybe thunder in a distance but not in any danger...

He remembered a time when the strap of her bathing suit slid off of her shoulder...she had turned slightly and it fell off and slid down past a freckle...and in his mind he counted time...waiting for her to restore it back into place...but she didn't move...it lingered, like as if somebody had suddenly said a word that hung in the air and waited for a response...and so it stayed there like a tease and he was begging for it to slip even further.  Years further in the future the comfort with which she easily removed her top was a sharp contrast to that first summer...

And the water...the waves...the foam in the green.  The taste of the ocean was a narcotic of the season...warm, salty...it was a kiss in a wide-opened mouth...and he entered it again and again, plunging his head beneath the waters...the sudden quiet after the noise of the surf...

He entered into her ocean occasionally...and it was as hot as the asphalt outside of a 7-11 in the height of July...

At times, he would reach down and actually touch the parking lot and it would burn slightly and he would be reminded of her.