Come Back To Bed

The eruption of tears, the depths of despair, the endless fog, self-neglect and recriminations have abated, if not stopped altogether, but she is still gone.

Her hand in mine as we walked the streets of the city, until it took both of my hands to hold the purchases we had made. Sitting on the husband bench in the SoHo stores awaiting her runway appearance from behind the curtain of the changing rooms. It didn’t matter what she wore; it could have been rags. It wasn’t just me—you could hear the shop girls gasp, damn, she took your breath away.

We stopped for lunch and sat at an unsteady table outside on the streets of the Village. I bent to fix it. Then I sat just resting my eyes on her. She called it staring, mocking me with her quizzical half smile. We kissed on Cornelia Street. The softness of her lips always surprised me even after almost half a century. Her Celtic nose and my Roman one complemented each other so well that our lips could touch nose to nose.

Our voices and laughter echoed as we descended the steps of the subway, change gently tossed into the guitar case of the minstrel, my hand in the overhead stirrup and hers holding me close as the subway screeched and lurched its way to the caverns of Grand Central, emerging into a room with the signature clock atop of the information booth at the center of the grand hall. Her head on my shoulder as the train left the tunnel and the late afternoon sun seemed too bright.

Home to the quiet of the little gray Cape Cod with barn-red shutters where we had raised our sons, now men, and two dogs now gone. Packages on the chair in the dining room, enough time to unpack in the morning.

Dinner done she stood at the kitchen sink, my arms around her, tasting the back of her neck. We sat on the couch with herself wrapped in a blanket and my arm draped around her shoulder. The dishes drying in the rack and the drama on TV done we would spoon until one or the other would turn the other way and, with our bodies still touching, drift off to sleep. In the morning I would try to slip out of bed without waking her. She a late sleeper and me an early riser, I would gently close the bedroom door.

I hunger for her now, I thirst for her, dreaming she is as present as the thunderstorms she loved, and when my eyes finally open I slowly realize that she won’t be coming back to bed.