Figures Fall Loose

At night my body falls inside the warm cloak of yours. My shape attaches to the island of your body. My figure forms itself around the contours of your curves, so we can both feel most comfortable, as we lie drowsy with dreams. Your arms feel like wings, and underneath them I feel weightless. You fall asleep in mid-whisper, but I don’t rouse you to hear your sentence finish. I let you fall beneath the dream—let you remain enclosed behind the lids of darkness. The wind purrs against the blind’s backside, and its spine shivers in response. The night encourages the excess of this emotion. One could even say, the lack of light stimulates coquetry—activates our nerves to experiment in the laboratory of the bedroom which is specifically equipped with devices for probing. From the window, bodies that haven’t fallen for sleep peer in at our scene and notice us in fascination. Their eyes beat in a silent symphony similar to the heart. They can’t hear this pulsating musicality, of course; one would have to be deaf to experience how palpable the cords of desire are—how these notes are so heavy with substance that they can be felt. This motion of the heart mesmerizes the spying faces whose eyes are locked in loyalty to our all-encompassing romance. They sigh covetously, and become so transfixed on a life they are not living that they take no notice of how their rosebud lips have become pressed against the naked skin of the window. They looked starved and sad. The lights die out around the city that I can see. I am left to assume the night has erased every artifice that materializes during the day; and now wakeful eyes are left with nothing to see, only the secret universe that is spotted in the honeycomb of their mind. I feel like I have stepped out of my heart and have gone walking under the enormous sky. I follow my self as she goes wandering through the passage of where streets were once interlaced. Nothing signals that they were there, except for a map that exercises the same use as a postcard—nothing more than a reminder. But her feet continue moving, blindly, and her body moves forward, passing through the bodies that once gave shape and character to the streets of this colorless city. Although I am inside of her, I watch her as she lets her hand drop and dangle with an air of hope. I think for her, and she imagines that you will appear and weave your hand inside hers. She will not need to act surprised because she will be, truly. I imagine further, and you now have taken a lock of her hair and braiding it through your fingers, are able to whisper into her exposed ear, “Let us escape.” We all go running—all three of us. But this is impossible because you are stitched to my sheets, inside my bedroom and involved in the script of your dream, as I am somewhere wondering. Your lips imprint my lids and my lashes rise with erections. “I love you, Sleeping Beauty,” your voice breathes against the curtains of my eyes. Behind the curtains, I see your skin kissing my skin and picture you speaking to me as soft and faint as nonexistence. I make no moves, and lay there framed. I perform behind my curtains, a sleeping beauty. You fall back asleep believing that I had been safely sleeping. But then again, maybe you knew that I had been awake trying to record the final take of you and last scene of us. You’ll never tell me, and I’ll never ask, neither of us will know the truth. The sun rises from her sleep, and I slip out of bed and hurry outside to see if the streets still exist. They do, or so it appears, but I walk them anyway, turning my head ever so often, to see if they have disappeared and whether they have escaped me. Night arrives and occupies the city, so the streets leave and become busy elsewhere. I come back to my bed, and you are gone. The sheets are straightened and it looks as if you were never there, but I can feel you. A note sits where my head had been lying and it reads, “I don’t understand. You disappeared, and I waited.” Liquid washes over my eyes, and I can’t see where I am. I don’t understand either. I just knew one of us would eventually disappear, so I decided to escape first. This is my only reason, and I fall to sleep. The window-watchers are kept up, though. They are missing us.