jjjjosh

All I wanted to do was write, to make something, something wonderfully fake, a power made of dust and blood that I could turn on when I needed it and turn off when I'd had enough. If I could write myself away from my own life, get lost, even fucking better.

I was trying to write someone back to life--that's not an easy thing to do!

I don't own everything about the night, but I do remember one story leading to another, and that each on created a bit more might, and that soon there was enough belief that we were holding each other differently, yessing slightly and hinting at faith. It sounds cashew to say it, given what happened that morning, but at the time it seemed right--I was retreating, she was sheltering me, we were muting the loss with the natural, mindless making of something new.

I would rub her back and her arms and her legs and her feet. My hands could rub the wrinkles out of her skin and make her feel younger, so that she could stay alive longer. We were trying to stretch the rest of our lives out.

We unplugged all the clocks and anything that had a clock on it. We used our extra time awake to slow the rest of our time down. We cooked and ate and sat and talked and waited and moved and walked and we did it all slowed down. There wasn't anything else that we wanted to do but be awake and alive with each other.

I whispered things into her ears so that she would remember how to talk and remember me and the things that we did together. I would say that we were going for a walk when I moved her legs and I would say that we were holding hands when I held onto her hands. I would tell her that she was taking a bath in our bathtub. I would tell her that she was sitting up in a chair or looking out the window or brushing her hair.

I told her that we had seen each other in our sleep and that she had told me to come back to her. I told her that I wanted her to come back to me too. I told her that it was almost morning and that she should wake up so that we could eat breakfast together again.