He woke up some time around nine thirty-seven sharp.
His eyelids were slow, like men having their names called out by people they didn't like; hesitant to turn around and respond (in this case, disappearing) to the pounding sunlight shining through the curtains of blood vessels between his lashes and his irises. When those eyes finally lifted open, slowly, effortlessly, involuntarily, without consciousness behind their movements, they rolled listlessly around the room and gazed past the ceiling. He saw the birds overhead, the clear sky dotted with clouds, as if Jackson ******* had a bucket of bright blue left over from past experiments, and a brush full of white needing depletion. He saw the tree-branches and the golden green red glow from the reflected color of leaves, dying exponentially faster than he, though at a relatively exact rate. Alas, through all this sight, he neglected the ceiling's inability to cease existing and his curtains' inability to open by a simple wave of his hand. When he rolled to stare at the curtains, he saw what he had dreamed of all night.
She lie still, breaths steady and slow, almost hollow, as if her chest were a chamber of holes, a giant pan flute, to be played by his fingertips every time he sang, or to be tasted by his eyelashes every time he fluttered under her weight. She lay with her legs over his, and her upper body wrapped tightly, a barrier of down feather between her chin and his chest. It reminded him of her and how she was, and for that matter, why he loved her.
Her upper body slept alone, like her mind. Her independence always told her to run away from that beautiful sameness, that cerebral conjoining of collective consciousness, that upholding of one person among all others, that hole to fall into, that crutch to lean on, that nail sticking out of the wall waiting to catch her in the armpit. Her automatic reaction to being wanted was fear, confusion. See, her view on love was like her view on a child: It was beautiful, it was hers, and it was a way to put herself second. In this way, it was a potential threat all the time. He understood this because he always felt somewhat similar.
But he hated himself, so he never tried to use bricks. He only used cinder blocks, and he built them on their sides, so he could constantly see what was coming through the other side. Not to mention, in case any other wanted to drive headlong into his ego igloo with a Dodge RAM.
He woke her up.
She turned. She smiled.
"I miss you," he said. She gave him a kiss.
"I could never be more proud of you than I am right now. What you're doing, where you are, your goals, your plans to right your wrongs, nothing can make me happier. Every time you tell me about all the fun things you did, my soul wants to fall in half and squeeze my heart. I want to cry so much. I love you because you don't need me. I love you because there is a piece of you that doesn't want anyone, especially me. I love the way you smile at me over the phone, I love the way we moan when we're out of things to say. I love that when I lay down, I can close my eyes and feel a little warmer because I'm imagining you're next to me. I love that right as I type this, I'm withholding tears. I wish I could express to you how much you amaze me, how many things I would do for you, how high (or low, or far, or near) I would go to make things easier for you, to help you appreciate the struggles and the solutions and the beauty and the darkness.
"When you're around, I feel I have replaced my blood with LSD. Staring into your eyes is like looking up through tree canopies at the sun. My hands on your back and waist feel like tunnels from your electric impulses to my heart. Your hands fit in my sadness.
"I wish we could do it all over again. The best thing in the world right now to me would be burying my face into your chest and crying, only because I love you so much. For you, I would absorb fire. I would conduct electricity. I would sponge water.
"Every time you are asleep and your hair slides across my face, I have a little bit of fun. The wind outside floating through this window makes no noises: I whistle into your ears. Sometimes I wonder if it puts you on high mountains in dreams, or allows you to shred down hills on a 10-speed. I hope that when you grab my hand unconsciously, your mind tells you that you're grabbing my hand."
She stared, a look in her eyes that he loved more than anything:
A look of overwhelming fear, love, and confusion. A look that said "You are beautiful and how much you mean to me scares the hell out of me and I don't know why you see the things you see or you do the things you do or I scare you so much. I don't know why you put yourself down so low, I get so sad to think that you like the way you look starving, that your favorite pictures of you are missing teeth, that your blood is a poison. Because it's all so untrue.
You look best with food in your mouth, your best pictures are the ones where the gaps in your bucks and the crooked incisors are prevalent, your blood is a solution of equal parts music and unwarranted guilt.
I love you more than you know. If I could show you, I'd be scared. I need to look out for number one."
And he understood her look. And he kissed her. And all he had left to relay was this:
"You should never feel obligated to do anything for me. You must never feel that you have disappointed me. You shall never begin to think of the idea of putting me above you. You are beautiful and healthy and you deserve to be happy on your own. But I don't want you to be alone. You are beautiful and amazing and you glow so brightly, that I couldn't imagine myself anywhere but beside your light. I want to be the person in your life that you can go to any time, or every time, or rarely. But I want to be that person you miss seeing, you miss holding, when "rarely" is the case.
"When you close your eyes, I want you to see us lying side by side. When you think of your favorite times, I want you to see us on a beautiful summer's day. When you think of the person who can sit beside you and eat comfortably, and enjoy every bite, and smile and laugh like and idiot when you spill the milk, I want you to see me covering my teeth with my right hand, trying desperately not to spit.
"And when you think of comfort outside of solitude, I want you to think of your hand in mine."
He didn't care what came next. He had made one mistake, and this was the way he would fix it. This beautiful day, this beautiful woman, this perfect union of individuals in mutual understanding of individuality (and of solitary needs), this is the means to show her he was not on another page. He was right behind her. He supported her.
And in so many ways, he was under her.
Holding her up.
As she did him.
Like a constant impossible loop, strength taken from strength, back and forth. Like recycling.
"I love you. And everything you do is going to make you better.
And nothing will make me happier than you being better."
As they kissed and he rolled over to go back to sleep, and she hung up the phone, they each dreamed of when she got back, when she was better. He dreamed she would return, colorful, and soft, and glowing. And they embraced. He dreamed of seeing her at the end of the day, after she had seen her family, and her close friends, and those who mattered just as much.
And then she came to his house and got in bed with him.
And he dreamed they slept arm in arm.