Thinking Of You

After work she decides not to go to the store because it’s windy and dark and a little colder than she’d expected this morning when she decided to wear her spring jacket instead of her winter coat. Earbuds, bus stop, off at the dairy and a quick walk along the street that looks over the bay. It’s been a long day, and a long week, and she’s been thinking about you—all of you–more than she’d like to admit.

Maybe she kissed you, maybe she didn’t. Maybe she
thought about it a little when she didn’t have to actually be around you and be forced to remember what you’re really like. Maybe she thought about it a lot, when she was chopping vegetables for soup or in boring work meetings, maybe she thought about kissing you so much and in such luscious detail that the next time she saw you she got a little confused, like, hey, have we actually made out or not, I can’t remember. How do you actually ask that question, though, how do you say: the you that lives in my head is so in love with the me who lives in my head, and right now in my head, the you who lives there and the me who lives there are totally making out. You can’t say that, you can never say that, so she doesn’t. She didn’t. She won’t.

She eats a quick dinner and checks her email and runs downstairs to draw a bath—she did hot yoga last night and her shoulders are killing her, and it’s been such a long week, and she is so tired—and thinks about you some more. She thinks about your bodies when she eases down into the HOT HOT HOT HOT OW HOT HOT OW OW OW OW water and puts on her face mask made out of garlic and lemon, which she feels would go equally well on some nice crusty ciabatta toast as on her poor blotchy face. She thinks about your bodies as she soaps and shaves and scrubs her own, she imagines what you looked like when she knew you and wonders what you might look like now. Probably you have not got older as she’s got older. Probably you are not doing a garlic-lemon face mask in the bath at eight o’ clock on a Friday night. Probably you have stayed gorgeous and glowing, the way you were when you were with her, when she could not take her eyes or her hands off you, for however tiny a time. She washes her face (gently, with a washcloth, for the exfoliating effect) and thinks of the colors of your skins, how they looked against hers, all those times.

She goes upstairs and wanders around the kitchen and the lounge and makes a cup of tea, dips the bickies in, sits on the couch, stands up, sits down again. The carpet needs cleaned and the dishes need done, so she does them—well, the dishes at least—and pulls on a pair of socks because it’s not quite spring yet, jacket choice notwithstanding. Her hair shouts out around her face when she looks in the mirror (did that face mask do anything?) and she wonders what she’ll do tomorrow on her Saturday morning, wonders what she’ll do and where she’ll go, whom she’ll talk to. She considers going to a different yoga class, reminds herself to text her friend about lunch in town. She hopes the weekend weather will be good so she can wear her new dress to a dinner on Sunday. It’s cold in the lounge and she’s got a good book and there’s nothing to do anyway so she fills up her hot water bottles and brushes her teeth and that’s that, it’s over, she’s done.

Her clean celibate bed can feel so crowded some nights, with all of you in there with her, all whispering in your different voices. She turns off the light. You turn it back on. She rolls over. You roll over with her. She closes her eyes. You loom up behind her eyelids. She pushes you away, she yells at you to leave her alone, to get out of her life and her head and her bed and her heart. Get out, get off, get away, she yells, thrashing the sheets, ripping the pillows, and you obey her at once, silently, unanimously, you get away. You get out. You’ll be gone again when she wakes up completely, when she wonders why the bed’s been torn apart. The sun will come in the window, the tuis will sing, the day will be there, served up bright and innocent like a plate of eggs, and she will try to stop thinking about you one more time, will let you go and go and go and go.