My hand is pressed against his body. I can feel his eyes. They look at me, up close, and then they’re closed. He’s waiting for me to say it, but I’m not going to. The words will have to come from his own lips if he needs to hear them.

I let my body grow closer to his own, but I remain unattached.

Last night the trees had been scratching the window as my fingertips ran the course of his back.

I could hear the beginning again, and I moved, and lay down, letting him feel without my touch. Letting him be without me.

I had been watching the storm break around him and I had grasped at the idea that I could make it disappear, but soon the storm became nothing to me, and everything inside of him, and there was no hand I could offer to pull him away.

All that remained were my lips pressed on his and his hand leaning against the glass and I was becoming undone, as he washed me away without letting me escape.

He had told me I belonged to him more than anyone, which I took as a good thing. He said it many times, and I took it and I took it, until the day I realised he was just stringing the words together, without understanding their effect.

‘We can not control emotion’ he had told me, ‘We try but we can not’ and I understood his words, and I believed them because I believed in him.

The bed was still warm from the night when two bodies had lay in it but the air was making my skin feel tough. He was still, sat on the side of the bed. I couldn’t see his eyes from where I was lying but it didn’t matter anyway.

‘Should things be like this?’ He said, remaining still.
‘No-one said they wouldn’t be like this.’ I looked away.
‘I do like you, you know?’
‘I like you.’
‘You’re gentle, and I like that.’
‘You have a beautiful mind and you understand.’
‘So, are you content now?’
‘I think so.’

I was finding him and losing him all at once. He moved toward me, and I lay on top of him, over his whole body. I felt him move as he was living. I fell asleep and I think he did too. He was becoming a stranger in my dreams, and I knew I was ever too familiar to his sleep. We lay there, and we were able to be content.

Around dinnertime we woke up, or got up, I forget which came first now. He held my hand as I opened the window, and I held his. The branches were still scratching the pane as I was reaching inside of him. I moved around to kiss his lips and I saw his eyes and I saw his lashes. I didn’t understand him at all. I didn’t understand how I belonged with him more. I leaned forward and the boards made a sound, so I leaned away.

‘Okay’ I said.
‘Don’t’

The silence was witnessing all of this.
Our words were only interruptions to the quiet.
I was drawing my mind with my eyes, into his.

His forefinger moved upwards, and my lips became dry and somewhere a race was won, and a race was lost.

He let go of my hand and I looked out of the window, and then moved into another place.