Align

She was laying alongside him, her head just along his breastbone, and her hair was spilling upon him.  He was holding bits and pieces of it in his hands, splayed between his fingers, moving from the top of her head down to her shoulders.  He could see the white scalp, the shades of hair color starting and then moving in colors away from the part-line.

Every now and then he would open his palm and slide it down the length of her hair, like he was smoothing out the ends. Sometimes he just rested his hand slightly behind her ear, and let his fingers trace the hairline from their until it disappeared into the tapering behind her neck.

His chest moved slightly, because she was extremely light against him, and she molded onto him like she was pressed from an iron, warming, clinging, but slowly and gradually.  Melting.  Butter into the crevices of hot corn on the cob.  Rivulets of waffle-mix spilling and bubbling into the streets of the griddle.  When she was against him, in these quiet and effortless moments, he often felt like they shared each other...like a part of him was strung into her, and he needed to feel her breathe for him to breathe...that he needed to watch her pulse beat sweetly in her neck for him to metronome his own heart.

She breathed in, he breathed out.

What are you doing up there?  She murmured against the tee shirt of his chest, and she said it like she had suddenly awakened.  He had never been the first voice she had spoken to in a morning, but he had always known how it might sound.  Or at least he had hoped.

I'm admiring your scalp.

She tilted her head upwards, and he saw down her forehead, the angle of her nose, the rise of the cheekbones seen from above.


I'm pretty sure it's like all the others you've seen.

You'd be wrong.

Why?  Have I got something in my hair?

No...no.  You've got beautiful hair.  Nothing to worry about.  All good from up here.

She moved her head so it went back down, he couldn't tell if she was looking at something or had her eyes closed.


I was just finding a part of you that I had never really noticed he offered up.

You're taller than me...you get lots of time to study my hairline.

One would think...but it's where the scent of shampoo lingers the most, where the conditioners moisten and...condition, I suppose.

They're doing their job...this feels like an inspection.

He stopped.  Hardly.  I'd call it admiring.  I always love the different parts of you that make up the whole...but I will stop for now.

Thank you.

He didn't tell her that he did it to remind him that she was real, that she was there...that she had skin that could be cut, that she could bleed, that she wasn't just this part of his imagination but rather delicate and glaringly real.