Over my computer's fan, over the squeak of my keys, I can hear her breathe.
It is an early seven ante-meridiem, for this morning I cannot stand anything that shortens the life of my story, anything that brings me closer to the end. For her, the time is not early or late; this is nearly her normal waking moment. This is the rarest of occasions, that I rise before her, and manage to slip out of bed. She will stir, and sit up quickly when she realizes I am not with her, but will ask me, clearly, what I'm typing when she understands that I am just across the room.
I hope I do not wake her, I do not believe she�s slept in a day in her life. Always working, always moving forward. And I? I sleep through weekends, and disaster and suffering, and wake in my bathroom, oblivious to the white tiles and blue curtains.
She rolls over and I freeze: when I type fast, I pound the keys, wanting speed, wanting the words to flow out, a river�s font, streams of letters that white wash and bleach against stone, the solidity that I try to impart and at the same time, build up in my own hands.
The stone, the oak, the nails that I try to emulate, to walk the same path to different places.
And asleep, in bed, not ten feet away, is the woman who has sunk, dived, and dwelled attached to my bones. Asleep is my ivy, even as the oak slipped away out of bed, she sleeps. Asleep is the woman from my back seat.
And now? The ivy grows with me, the vines that wrapped themselves tightly now prop me up from underneath, and the woman who once drove me off the road, now gently stirs and rolls toward me. I knew she�d ask, and I know she wonders what took me out of bed. I whisper an answer that she only half hears, and she mumbles back, her clear voice clouding with sleep again.
The tale must end quickly, so I will rise before she truly and fully wakes, to hold her as her own ivy, as she now the oak. But together, we both suffocate each other, and together, we both grow, entwined.
And grow entwined.
Give me purchase, and I�ll pull myself along,
When all words fail, and empty voices ring;
There are few heroes and fewer strong.
Did we wake this ugly morning?
Rising heavy and slow.
Cool blue cracks my window,
Early dawn, with no sun.
Grey then, go and chase the wind; run
I�m so sorry, my painted love,
That my eyes did not reach your soul
Driven purely white, as the hawk envies the dove,
Have here, we say, the last and final wingover roll,
But as birds we are not lovers lost,
And in this storm, calmly tempest tossed.