Creative Writing

The Things We’d Do        

We’d sit and read books,
my feet in your lap
We’d lay in bed,
your fingers, traipsing
along my ribs, trespassing
along my belly, the one
I wish was smaller, the one
where you find nothing wrong.

I’d make us toast
And cakes
And pies
You’d make us toast too,
with avocado.

We’d cry, usually not at the same time
And laugh, usually, and often at the same time
I’d drink too much wine
You’d kiss me, especially, when worry filled my brow
And for a moment my only worry,
that you’d stop.

There’s these pieces of me
I’ve been saving them, like the pineapple flavored gummy bears,
for last
I’ve been saving them
for you
I’ve saved them for so long
I almost gave up
(I was not sure I’d saved them at all).

I like this photo.
Her shoulder features, prominently. Her hair,
beginning to stick, with the humidity and rain,
     IS so beautiful, against the glow of her bare
shoulder.

In the background, their smiles. Hers,
especially full.
Of so much.     You want to ask her what all it holds.
   And perhaps you’d like to borrow it sometime.

Maybe it’s a bit weird, to like
a photo of a shoulder so much but,
to me
   that’s the thing
     about having a lover.

We get to know each others’ bodies
intimately.
     We get to look at things
like shoulders,
     or ribs and collarbones
to really see them
no need of mirrors and things.
     We get to admire
         their tendons.
We get to study their toes.

And then we get to find places     in and on
      their body       for our own.
Oh my hand is quite at home in this slant of
                   her side.
My head fits just right in this nook of his chest.
       Beat, beat goes the heart.
My fingers are dancing along
                  your spine.
one vertebrae       
                        at a time.

I did not know I could admire a shoulder
            SO MUCH.
’til I met yours. 

Every morning I wake to the warming sky. Your white walls still holding the deep blue of night. I marvel at the pink blossoms outside your windows. I get up. I brush my teeth. I pee. I begin my day. I read about love in your bed, however this particular story makes me like love less. I think about running. I go running. Usually up towards the bridge. I think about delicious coffee and how I will drink it after running.

I make toast with lots of butter. I bought an avocado because I wanted to make avocado toast like you. I also bought tomatoes. But not Jersey tomatoes. I don’t want to be like you and Alice. I eat at your bar stools and look out the window, looking nowhere at all. I feel least lonely in the morning. Perhaps, not lonely at all. I decide to shower.

I walk barefoot and damp wrapped only in a towel along your wood floors. Pausing as I pass your closet, I admire the shirts hung neatly, but not perfectly. I touch them. I’m curious about them. This light blue one, the material is fairly coarse but well worn. What does it look like on you? I think this striped one would be my favorite on you.

In another life I’d be wearing your shirt right now. We’d have met at a bar and as things sometimes happen especially on unseasonably warm early May Fridays after a few too many glasses of wine and too easy conversation, one thing has led to another. But in the morning even with the spell of the spring heat broken we linger. We eat breakfast together. You make me toast and eggs and I pick up your shirt off the floor to wear, a brazen move for a stranger, but maybe we’re strangers no more.

In this life, I put on your shirt. I can’t put my finger on the why. Maybe I wonder if we would fit together. I look at myself in your shirt.

I eat my lunch alone.