Month: December 2010

It’s the winter. It’s the winter that tells me you are at my door.

I knew it this morning when I left, pulling firmly on the front door handle as I twisted the key. The door is stubborn and tricky; it won’t lock without a bit of force. It is worse, in the cold.

And it was cold outside, cold in the way that winter’s should be cold, where to stop moving is to stop entirely.

But you never stop, not for the winter, not for me.

I call you insidious. You inhabit me without intention, grace by accident, and I find you at the periphery.

When I turn from the door, you are there, almost.

And then you spin away.

Frail, your wrists; not quite delicate, I can count the bones encircled by my fingers.

I favored you, like I favored so many other delightfully deceitful things.

You were tangible, tangled, taught and taunt. I slept with you not as lovers but as a cohabitant of a singular thought, an indistinct promise exchanged in the sweet fumbling and then insistent and purposeful positioning that almost woke us, almost broke the unspoken and entirely imaginary line that kept us on just this side of decency.

“Reside,” I said, “And I will reside with you.”

I left those words, just long enough to make my words true and honest, before discarding them, “Reside,” I amended, “And I will cut away the rest of the world, snipping continents with a steady hand until all that is left is the island of you.”