remnants – SOC *edit – a funny*

There are bits and pieces of memories stuck all over me. I’m finding random hair on my shirt, a lingering scent that was innocuous and hidden on the place a few inches above my belly button where her head rested, where her hand made fingerprints and lasting impressions. And every time it’s deeper. Every time it is a movement, a symphony – it’s not a simple give and take – my turn, your turn, roll over and see what’s playing on the tv. It’s unlike anything I could have imagined. It’s like a tangled up mess of body heat, connections and intensity. And in the moments during, when we catch the other watching and smile that evil smile, we match. It’s this for that, it’s the tug of war we play in power struggles out of fun, wrestling matches and clenched fingers and open, enfolding arms – and Technicolor eyes that seem to share the same shade in mirrored reflections when we least expect it.

I slept last night deeper and more restfully than I have in a long while. I was out, gone. We were talking about Busch Gardens before she drifted off – she doesn’t drift, really. One moment she’s there, then she’s gone, curled around behind me, her breath soft and warm at the base of my neck, her arm holding me like she’s afraid I’m going to float away…it’s probably based in the real. I was floating and free, but I’m thinking my helium leaked in puddles of sweat, in half whispered, half imagined words as we learn the steps to these dancing moments. She likes my music. And this morning, my inner alarm went off before the blaring, jarring real one did. I dreamed she was a story – I had written a story all over her, and was trying to read it, trying to transcribe it before it washed away in a spring rain. I was looking for the end of a paragraph, somewhere between two of her fingers, and in examining them, I was losing my ability to read. I can still taste the way words felt in the quiet moments – we spoke of palpitations and irregular rhythms. Rhythm is not our problem. We spoke of many things – of how we barely dared to dream realities, only to find that our dreams couldn’t have come close to the reality of what is – what could be.

She held me in bed this morning, refusing to let me leave to begin the drive back to work. She didn’t have to hold on tight…or at all, for that matter. I didn’t want to go. I found the niche I belonged in and it was there, with her, reliving and imagining those moments, knowing that they were not an errant daydream to have when I should be focused on work – they were real. They happened. They will be repeated. And she whispered carefully that she never really got it, never really understood it until now. I concur. I wouldn’t have believed anyone’s word that it could be like this – that any of it could be like this. So easy. So simple. Familiar and new. It’s like we’re mapmakers discovering the world every day, tracing the remnants of our footprints from the night before, filled in and etched deeper by the tide in our former passing, but still welcoming to the new touch of a morning beach walk. We’ve been here before, I say, pointing out an overlap where her toes met mine in a previous walk.

I agree with a certain sentiment. Perhaps we’ve always known, but have been circling waiting for the moment where it was time to settle, when the wings had their fill of air, and were looking for a safe, firm place to plant roots and build a real. It’s new packaging for an old awareness, an old knowledge. A strange familiarity, when everything around me is new, and shining.

*edit*
From a coworker: there’s a downside to cheetohs. My fingers are all orangey and gross. I look like I’ve been boinking an oompa loompa