The snow I walk upon

The nights when I’m with her are the ones that hurt the most.

Moonlight from the window spills through the blinds despite all efforts, falling across our sheets scattered like golden leaves. The clock on the wall ticks loudly. I don’t hear it unless I want to. I always hear it on nights like this, when my forehead starts to sweat and I become acutely aware of my own breathing. There’s a pounding piano playing the same chord over and over again in my head, and all I really want is a strumming guitar. I hear my own breathing, and then, as I feel the moonlight aching for my eyes, I feel hers.

Dark hair tumbling down a bare back, soft skin that never looks as perfect as it does then, and that quiet angelic sound of sleeping love. I let my eyes adjust to the darkness and her. She rises and falls, slowly, as she sleeps, and I let myself breathe with her.

It’s inevitably regrettable but never accidental when I reach out and let my hand slide across her back. She’s always so warm. I let my hand rest between her shoulder blades, and then trace down her spine until I reach the sheets. I sigh, and she sighs, and of course she wakes.

Her head turns and our eyes meet for only a second before her tangled hair topples across her face. I laugh softly, not because I need to, but because I want to. I sense a smile beneath that mess of hair. She gurgles and giggles, and talks.

“You woke me,” she says, letting her body roll over so that she’s facing me, close to me.

“There was something on your back,” I tell her, wrapping my arms around her.

“My back?” she asks, snuggling her face against that spot on my chest, next to my shoulder, where she fits so well.

“Some sort of bed bug,” I say, and let my lips drift over her forehad, “I think it was about to bite.”

She laughs against me. It tickles and so I laugh with her, letting myself go. My hands trace all over her back as we laugh together. The bed creaks. I hear the clock. “Mmm,” she says against me, “We should sleep. Sleep is good.”

She snuggles again. Her hair feels so good against my skin. My eyes stay open. The clock ticks. The light is too bright. I breathe, she breathes — it’s good. I need to speak.

“I love you, you know,” I say to her hair. My fingers walk up her back and slide into the softness.

“Mmm,” she says again sleepily, “It’s too bad I’m gone.”

The ticking continues. My hand strokes her hair. I start to speak, but she continues, her voice quiet and slipping quieter.

“I’m not here, anymore,” she says to my chest, “I haven’t been here for so many months now.”

That god damn ticking rings through my head and her hair is tangled. My fingers stick and I can barely hear her voice.

“I’m not here.” I watch as her eyes turn to mine. I want to remember the way she looks at me. I want to remember the curve of her cheek and the pout of her lips and the length of her every eyelash, but she’s so blurry and so far, and all I really see is her words in scrawled blue ink on the pad of paper resting on the table beside the bed. “I’m gone,” she says. And she is.

The clock quiets and I let my eyes close. I try not to feel. I roll over in bed. And over again.