Suspicious Minds

He sang for me once. He will not do it again. He laughs when I suggest it. Negative, he says, as if issuing the results to a pregnancy test. But I am sure I am living for two.

I am leaving for two weeks. We spend my last night here together, behind his locked bedroom door. Our bodies are woven together perfectly and his breath is hot in my ear. I could make love to you all night long, he whispers. I thought we were making something altogether different.

He smiles during dinner one night. The kind of smile where his face lights up and I see all his teeth. It is a beautiful smile, but I feel unbearably small, realizing that if he didn't press those teeth against my neck, I would forget they exist. Why doesn't he smile for me more often?

He misses me if I am away. I am lonely for you, he writes. He calls to say that he found one of my hairs on his pillow, which still smells like my shampoo. He is afraid to wash his sheets, afraid he might forget me if my smell is gone. When I return, he asks me to promise I won't leave him again.

Sometimes it is as if I am dealing with a small child. Petulant, irrational, sensitive. He is prone to minor tantrums and accutely aware of any slight. He is the only child, unwilling to let anything take his mother away. My attention must be undivided.

I am laying naked across his bed. Tentative light filters into the room through his blinds. I am on my back, every part of me spread open to him. He looks, studies, touches. A believer at the feet of Jesus. I accept his idolatry.

We see my favorite band play. He sits passively through the night, drinking a domestic beer and smiling at me when I dance. He whispers dirty promises in my ears. In his bed later, he falls asleep before touching me. I'm falling in love with you, he says confidently as he drifts off to sleep. He smiles as he says it, showing me his teeth again. I dress quietly in the dark and drive home, singing along to the radio.