Song: “Crack the Shutters” by Snow Patrol from A Hundred Million Suns

I don’t dare look away. If I look away, you’ll disappear, *poof*, like the fantasy girls of my adolescent dreams. The ones turn away by first light and screeching alarm clock. I stare. And I stare and stare. You slumber, breathing deep and even. I know how this looks. Bizarre. Uncomfortable. Creepy. I know but I can’t risk breaking focus. No one completes anyone else. That’s fairy tale nonsense. Those post-modern books and songs and movies tell us that. But maybe they’re wrong too. Maybe we do complete each other. But for moments. For seconds. And it’s always work. It’s only easy for that perfect ellipsis. Another reason I can’t look away. I can hold the ellipsis here. Hold you here. Hold us here. Naked. Cooling in the pre-dawn chill, when the buildings heating system quietly gives up the ghost before knocking back to life somewhere about 5. Sheets a mess, more like straps of fabric randomly strewn over the bed. Twisted. Untucked. Covering an arm here, a leg there, leaving us both in and out of exposure. Beauty peeking out in slivers of skin and outlines under green cotton fabric softened by repeated washes. My phone buzzes. I glance involuntarily. You stir.

The ellipsis pops. A soap bubble pierced by a pin.

“Were you watching me, weirdo?” you whisper, like we’re still back in the dorm. Or on the floor of my living room, trying not to wake my parents. Or under the bleachers in the middle of the pep rally. Your hand shakes off a ribbon of sheet and reaches for mine. Our fingers interlock. You smile. “I’m not going anywhere,” you promise. It’s not true. We’re both going. That moment is gone and replaced by this one which is now being replaced by another. But I want to believe it. So badly. So I slip around you, our chills becoming warmth. I kiss you and tell my own fib, “I know.” And then another moment slips. Down the cracks. Into the ether. I tell my heart there will be other moments. Perhaps many, perhaps few. But others.

It feels like enough.