Naked, Cold and Counting
You’re gone now but I still feel you with me. I feel you the way I do the things I was born with.
You; burning hot and caged beneath my aging skin – like the lingering warmth that swells and follows a long day beneath a summer’s sun.
But now, more so than ever, Love- I feel you in what I no longer feel.
Absence … radiating presence
You know more than anyone, that I’ve always been a restless sleeper, tossing and turning like a stone on an ocean’s shore.
Tumbling side to side, my anxious limbs chewing each stitch of fabric covering you
Covering I … Covering us.
But, sure as the tide and strong as a current, each night I’d be awoken to a reclamation strong enough to unravel me and all I had stolen like a human sleeping bag, returning what was rightfully yours.
This was one of the first things I missed. I felt you not pulling harder than you ever had pulled.
Three days after you passed I fell asleep for the first time. Only now, my side of the bed seemed to sag to the floor. Without you there to balance it out, I was nothing more than a child alone on a see saw.
The sheets stayed colder for longer without you too.
I used to listen to you breathe as I fell asleep. Each exhale; another sheep over the fence. I never got past 17.
Everything is more HERE now that you aren’t. Some nights the radiator buzzes so loud I could swear it shakes the bed and my heart beats stubbornly in my ear like a second hand rhythmically forcing its way through each minute, only to begin again from nothing. However, there are other nights when the suffocating and inescapable silence of being alone is so quiet and so overwhelming that my mind produces a deafening ring to distract from the absence of everything but me. Every night, quiet or loud is longer than the night before and I still haven’t found a position that mutes the drumming of my pulse hard within my frame - each beat a cruel reminder of an existence I’d prefer to ignore.
I used to listen to you breathe as I fell asleep. Each exhale; another sheep over the fence - Now I always get past 17
I woke up that first night to you not pulling. A mixture of guilt and habit rolled me and all of your sheets back out. It didn’t feel right without you there to take them back. Wrapping stolen gifts with no one there to open them – All push and no pull
The next few nights I made sure to tuck the sheets on your side in as firmly as I could. It felt good to have something next to me using and pulling your share. Yes, even if it was just a box spring and a mattress.
Despite each feeble attempt to recreate you, the covers would at some point come loose, pulling free from the mouth of the bed.
OUR bed …
I tried staples. I tried tape. I tried anchoring the sheets underneath the feet of the bed frame but nothing held for too long. The stronger the grip; the more violent the awakening - Pulling hand over fist just to feel you tugging on the other end. But each night, your grip slowly loosened and eventually there was nothing there, in your place to fight back. I would think of myself.
The ever dimming reflections of you slow their fading when I am weary and there’s something there to play your part.
The sinking feeling takes a little longer to set in.
There are a few more breathes before the gasping.
A fleeting moment of feeling like everything is all right, everything is where it is meant to be swallows me up for that brief moment, before I’m regurgitated back into reality.
Fetal position.
Clawing…
Aching agony.
It wasn’t long after you left that I found myself spending more time claiming your sheets for you than sleeping. The more I claimed, the more your sheets reminded me of you, and the more all my ploys and desperate attempts reminded me of me.
Nothing I fastened could hold on long enough to you. My big, clumsy, box spring hands too tired and too old to hold onto you, my precious sheets.
Then, one evening I gave up on all the staples and tape, needles and strings. I gathered up the sheets that I once tried so hard to hold on to and threw them once and forever to your side.
I don’t know why but I removed all of my clothes and lay naked in the middle of the bed … our bed.
My body was suddenly one half less yours than before and one half more mine than I had ever wanted. I felt half as light and twice as heavy.
The smooth surface of the mattress was cold. The skin around my nipples pulled tight and bubbled. The radiator fell silent. I felt your warmth in that cold for the first time since you had left. Every second you weren’t pulling the sheets from my grasp reminded me of you pulling the sheets from my grasp.
I pretended my breathes were yours and didn’t get past 17.
In time your absence became your presence. The cold of our bare mattress against my naked sagging skin was your warmth. The nothing sheets that I wasn’t stealing from you, not wrapped tightly around me and not in my hands became just the opposite.
My inhales were your exhales. Breathe in. Breathe out. One sheep, two. The negative of your life lived with me.
Sleep slowly began to creep in between us, so I fought it until it finally went away. I was never really asleep but never really awake. I was just counting your breathes, that were mine, that were sheep. Day in and day out. I am naked, cold and counting. But I am no longer alone. I feel you in what I no longer feel.
