we sleep tangled
His hands stretched out to meet hers. They never wholly touch; always approaching, never quite arriving. The evening sun blew into the window, illuminating the cap full of milk on the worn down, metal table. Dusk broke around a love that seems to fill the gaps between their fingertips. The old couple had captured their love in the spaces not yet filled, yet not empty still. The man offered both of his to her, but required nothing in return to know that love still lingered on the lip stained rims of water glasses.
A sheltered feeling seeps through the cracks on the floor, supporting the roots of the trees outside and so their waitress emphasizes feeling. She asks which side of the bed each of them sleeps on and which way their feet point in the shower – towards the sun or the moon or maybe each other. The man tells her only that they sleep tangled, crawling in and out of each other, making homes inside the molds. He tells her they never sleep with a blanket. The heat from their bodies is enough to keep warm, even on January 4th, when the weather is coldest inside their one-story home. He tells the waitress that as he falls asleep, his hands run through his lover’s hair before finally falling limp in a nest of her gray strands. He tells her that when he’s in the shower, his feet find his lover’s, wherever she may be, still asleep in bed, in the local deli, in the wind.
He says he loves her. Over and over and over again. For a tip, he leaves one hundred dollars for the waitress and tells her to entangle herself with the one she loves.
On the car ride home, there is little said, only the words of Annie Lenox, her favorite. In the open passenger seat glove compartment sits a stack of photographs, one for each trip they took in the beat-up old Subaru. The colors fade the farther the stack goes back; they were accustomed to adventure, never satisfied with the world around them, only with each other. A pair of dark-rimmed glasses with unwiped smudges lay next to the photos. Her memory was cloudy, always had been – the glasses helped to read the backwards words and faintly etched dates behind each picture, to put the life back in her eyes.
He stayed behind the wheel, his memory clear and his eyes wide open. He remembers. He remembers the smell of Juniper Lake after the thunderstorm, the way it flew into themselves like her cherry Chapstick the first time his lips drew near hers. He remembers the way the key to their first home jammed every single time, the way they got soaked in the rain trying to push the key in just enough to turn it, the way she yelled telling him to just break down the damn thing, the way they fell into each other when the door finally clicked open, the way they tore open their rain-soaked clothes, pushed away their dripping hair and made love on the welcome home mat they bought at Sal’s store down the road. He remembers her: bright pink lips and the mole at the base of her neck, the skin wrapped around each collar bone, around her pinky toes. He remembers when his hands made nests of a golden brown.
He opens the door to their one-story home; the key slid in with ease. Crawling into bed, his hands stretch out to meet hers, his legs shift to become intertwined, his lips purse to touch hers. He extends himself as far as his mind allows, before his heart lets out a heavy sigh, his limbs retracting back into his own body. He shivers and wraps one leg around the other. He reaches down and pulls the new blanket around his hips, drifts toward the side closest to the window, and sleeps.