"Eclipse"
The morning light had made its way into the hotel room and onto her back. Eyes still closed, half asleep, she reached down and pulled the covers off of her and threw them over me. I now had doubled-up covers piled atop me but, underneath that, her leg over mine, so I didn’t mind much. Her forearm lay across my chest and the light, angling through the window, now shined through the little blonde hairs on the back of her arm, hairs that she once admitted a slight embarrassment toward but to me were proof that she was human like me: a mammal, an animal, with established and understood desires. The rising sun coming through the window was our first together in three years but I felt like we’d shared many more. Space and priorities had always kept us circling each other at a distance, orbiting one another just out of physical contact but within the reach of our voices. And every few years, when the rotations were right, we’d find one another. “I’m in town,” she’d texted me the previous night. And I’d responded, “Just tell me where you’re staying.”
The maid’s cart wheeled by, hall lights casting its shadow under the door. The shadow paused, the maid presumably noticing the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, and moved on. I wouldn’t have cared if she’d barged in. There was no shame to be found in here.
Ours was the most natural connection I’d ever felt. We’d never had to war against outside forces, fighting for one another. If it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen. So we’d continue on, rotating through the world, skipping past life’s milestones and fielding the peripheral judgment, the familial concerns about “marriage” and “kids” and “grandkids.”
To everyone else, we were growing pariahs: never conforming to the molds they’d created and never able to explain why we didn’t want to. It didn’t make sense, but it was never about sense. It was simply physics: a car driving on a slanted road will take the curve that’s given to it. We put less thought into each other than the whole of the rest of our lives, and within that minimal effort grew a place free of pressure and ripe for comfort. So when we found one another it was pure joy, the light-as-a-feather kind you remember as a kid but can never articulate. Like a beloved photo, once taken candidly and later unearthed in a box, dusted off, remembered and held tightly.
With the sunlight baking the hotel room, the air conditioner kicked on, blasting an inordinate amount of cold air over the bed. She pressed her body in to mine. I reached down, grabbed her half of the covers, and threw them back over her. And in a few minutes, when the air conditioner had turned off, if she didn’t eventually reach down to pull the covers off her overheating body, I was prepared to do it for her. We had the whole day wide open, but it was possible we’d spend its entirety in bed, battling the varied air.
I’ve long known that we are two celestial bodies whose trajectories will inevitably put us on a crash course with one another, and the survivors will surely count to zero, but I don’t care. I can’t picture the apocalypse, but I know too well what it looks like when we overlap one another and the sun shines behind us, casting a beautiful shadow upon the world.
The maid’s cart wheeled by, hall lights casting its shadow under the door. The shadow paused, the maid presumably noticing the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, and moved on. I wouldn’t have cared if she’d barged in. There was no shame to be found in here.
Ours was the most natural connection I’d ever felt. We’d never had to war against outside forces, fighting for one another. If it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen. So we’d continue on, rotating through the world, skipping past life’s milestones and fielding the peripheral judgment, the familial concerns about “marriage” and “kids” and “grandkids.”
To everyone else, we were growing pariahs: never conforming to the molds they’d created and never able to explain why we didn’t want to. It didn’t make sense, but it was never about sense. It was simply physics: a car driving on a slanted road will take the curve that’s given to it. We put less thought into each other than the whole of the rest of our lives, and within that minimal effort grew a place free of pressure and ripe for comfort. So when we found one another it was pure joy, the light-as-a-feather kind you remember as a kid but can never articulate. Like a beloved photo, once taken candidly and later unearthed in a box, dusted off, remembered and held tightly.
With the sunlight baking the hotel room, the air conditioner kicked on, blasting an inordinate amount of cold air over the bed. She pressed her body in to mine. I reached down, grabbed her half of the covers, and threw them back over her. And in a few minutes, when the air conditioner had turned off, if she didn’t eventually reach down to pull the covers off her overheating body, I was prepared to do it for her. We had the whole day wide open, but it was possible we’d spend its entirety in bed, battling the varied air.
I’ve long known that we are two celestial bodies whose trajectories will inevitably put us on a crash course with one another, and the survivors will surely count to zero, but I don’t care. I can’t picture the apocalypse, but I know too well what it looks like when we overlap one another and the sun shines behind us, casting a beautiful shadow upon the world.