In the clotting fog he came stretching into view, hind legs still cast in the shadow of the copse. The path to breakfast was nonchalant and he licked yoke off his jowls as tidily as if she’d handed him a napkin.
I wish I had the grace of the dog, to be blinking in a pool of light and look heaven sent. The brimming tubs had strands of my hair indenting the water, proof of weakened little follicles and faulty hormones. Sweaty impressions of ass and thigh on the sauna floor.
We’ve since learned that the internet insists on an increasing lack of subtlety, something that would have made the watchdogs blush just ten years ago.
Time passes. A slow burning of hours under rain clouds and moonlight when silent things unfurl and rush for the sky.
A song designed to illicit an emotional melt down at the grocery store, smiling wetly at the man in the produce aisle clasping a cluster of tomatoes to his chest.
You and me shivering in decrepit jeans and woodsmoke sweatshirts. A little further apart than when we left and a little softer still.
We call on summer for the sake of nostalgia, because every heart flutters when they think of the way someone's skin smells in the grass. We were all so fucking beautiful.
You whipped through a wall of rain in Wyoming, cruising alongside a crescent of horses racing against the dark edge of cloud. Your heart was screaming.
You are flashing your eyes (zing! pow!) at anything that moves. You are suspended for six delicious minutes in a world of satisfaction.
This is a house cut into quarters, divided by paper-thin walls and the laughing of neighbours. I am always anxiously conscientious, my life exposed in murmurs.