I went to the bedroom and lay on the floor, so as not to mess up the covers.

I know you still reach your arms up into your thin cotton t-shirt, pretending that your fingertips are my own sending urgent telegrams like do you want me to keep going STOP your skin is dimpled, scarred, winter-sweater dry STOP it's beautiful STOP don't STOP you and I STOP.

You listen to Bosque Brown's "305 Bluebonnet" even when it is sunny and clear and the sounds of birds and rain shake the speakers and the walls they touch though you don't notice because your hands are shaking as it is between your breasts and down your middle like a scalpel. But you cannot be both of us and so it ends with you lying prostrate on the bench, blankets tangled around your ankles and face hidden in your warm elbow crease that smells of Lucky Strikes and Cool Whip and Twizzlers (because you only buy the best), shorts dragged down half-heartedly to your knees.

Left hand, a callus from opening a new bottle every hour for the past two years on the palm just beneath your ring finger and a long thin one on the outer edge of your index and they don't give you the same satisfaction because they do not belong to an ear-whisperer, do not tangle in your hair like a promise of being there in the morning.

Which is why I wasn't.

This is how it happens in my dreams.