Not Sleeping

You were the first person I slept with but never actually slept with.  Every afternoon when I left your house, I’d go home and sleep off the night where your body next to mine, wouldn’t let me rest.  You slept, soundly, a curled up fern and I wrapped my lonesome, adolescent body around you like morning dew.  I loved knowing that within the blink of an eye, I could touch you and feel the warmth and pulse of your being. 

 

                I was in love with the idea of what lying together meant.  I was in love with my hand cupped over your oblique smoothed like clay into the small crest that was your hip bone.  I was in love with knowing the cascading slope of your ribs, the soft ringlets of your hair tickling my nose, the delicate line of your spine beneath a light blue cotton t-shirt.  It was then, under the cover of darkness, when we were that close, when you trusted me, when I loved you, when I couldn’t sleep, I wanted to kiss you.

 

                I spent the summer not sleeping, but pretending like some Shakespearean actor, to close my eyes and fain surprise when you would, one night roll over, stroke my face and bid me to kiss you.  Just once. 

 

                But too much was at stake, so much would change with that brief touch.  I moved my hand from your hip and tucked it alongside my other hand beneath the pillow.  I tried to sleep but I kept dreaming of you.