A piece by Rosa Leah Picard

I’m sorry I left without a word this morning, that I slipped into the raining world and fell upon the mud with the early morning dog-walkers and the commuter-cars, their cones of rain lined up in headlights, while you rocked in your sleep-boat. You were dreaming, you told me later, so did not hear the door slam when I pulled it shut, swollen as the old wood is from the rain, and you did not feel the slice of hallway light fall upon your back, dividing the white widening of your shoulders from the shadowed dip of your spine. Against your back I’d lain all night, watching tower-block window lights flick on and off, watching wakefulness flit from frame to fitful frame.

The flat touch of two loving backs will not keep us warm. Jeans, dried crisp after rain, crumpled quietly. There was the sound of a bag lifted softly from the floor. In the chink of doorway I held my shoes, and almost retraced padded steps to your bed, almost kissed your neck, almost circled arms around your chest.

My hair got wet and stuck to my face. In the clouds, the domes of your closed eyes appeared huge across the sky. White clouds gleamed at the top of your closed lids, and grey clouds made the shadow of arcs receding, huge and peaceful.

I saw you sleeping first in the library, the night before exams. I observed the curve of your eyelashes and the round of your eyes closed so boldly, beautifully, trustingly exposed to everyone at work around you, in that room, still strip-lit at 3am. When you woke we went for a walk, into the warm night, into an old tree’s hollow where we rested our eyes and felt dense space between us. You put your ear to my belly when it rumbled, showed you wanted to know all of me. Your closeness that night was thick and central, the middle, thickest fold of something, some central nub around which everything would curve and bend, held.

You must have woken and rolled into emptiness, because you called my phone. It rang unanswered in my pocket. Your closed eyes vanished, smeared in rain. Mud turned to pavement and headlights dulled as I walked home.

Artwork by Lydia Lott