Clinomania

Outside turns orange from blue,
sunrise spills across the sheets;
she is still curled against you
as if the world outside does not exist—
a home, your bed, the sanctuary.
Her hair is on her face,
chaotically arranged by nothing but sleep;
a crease from her pillow
runs the length of her puffy cheek.
Yesterday’s mascara
has moved a little south.
Breath flows evenly
from her tiny open mouth.
Her hand is on your chest
where it has been all night,
holding you in place
in case you ever thought of leaving.
You were not—
never even crossed your mind.
There is no version of this morning
where you’re not tangled
like orchids on awnings
where beautiful flowers unfold.

Your beautiful flower has yet to bloom—bed sheets tangled like webs around your legs. Her fingers still splayed across your chest; small, slender, and warm. Five digits of conductive contact that have kept you tethered through the night. Sunday morn—still quite early, quiet and birds-a-chirpin’. You two have so much time in the world.

She stirs slightly against you—like milk against coffee, her body adjusts but doesn’t wake.

“Mhmm.”

“Go back to sleep, my love.”

“Mhm.” A reply of someone who pretends to—maybe she does, but with her you can never really tell.

You look at her like a miracle
you cannot believe you were allowed to keep.
The soft, gentle curve of her cheek—
the small line between her brows,
where she is pondering
even in her sleep.
You trace them with your eyes—
you don’t dare use your hands,
because if you woke her,
she would furrow
like a wasp roused too early,
stinging even while dreaming.

Her face is against your shoulder now—migrated there without you noticing. A visage even Aphrodite would be jealous of—okay, that might be hubris, but you’ll happily be Eros and get pricked if it means spending the rest of your life with this Psyche.

You’re used to this, you reason to yourself; every night she starts on her side of the bed—a perfectly soft pillow that is assigned to her, and somehow every morning she is here—tucked against you; a comma inside a sentence that was supposed to have ended a few thoughts ago.

Her lashes flutter—she’s dreaming, a grand adventure must be happening inside her beautiful mind.

Your lips find her forehead—lightly; barely a whisper, barely a kiss, barely a thought in that sleepy-head’s lived bliss.

“...felt that,” she mumbles softly.

“Thought you were sleeping.”

“I’m allowed to be asleep and know things.” 

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.”

“Well, no one else sleeps like me.”

Brightness and contrast,
now that she wakes.
Slowly uncoiling
like a hungry snake.
First her eyes flutter,
then a small stretch,
then a huge sigh
of someone forced out of a sketch.
Because in that fantasy
nothing’s really changed—
reality just introduces colors
bright yellows, whites, and orange.
Because in that dream we were still doing
exactly what we are doing now,
which is absolutely nothing,
which is everything,
which is the thing I would trade
all my other days for
just to keep having
over and over and over
until the last of my mornings.

Mornings with her have a shape that you can mold with your eyes closed. She wakes in stages: 

First her eyes—oh those eyes that glimmer on a good day, but are absolutely empty when she rises. 

Then her tiny stretch accompanied by the most feral groan—dramatics that would signal neighbors that the bear’s done with hibernation and she’s ready to feast again.

Then the hand that reaches for you before the gears of her brain even begin to work. You wonder if the habit sticks on days you both wake up in different beds—work, travel, obligations that seem to try but usually fail to keep you two apart.

She palms your cheek. “Hngg, you’re so warm, my love…” Her palm is cold on your cheek—and you would happily freeze for it.

“And your hands are so cold,” you playfully retaliate.

“You are cold.”

“Warm me up then.”

“Hmmph~ Demanding.”

“Nope, just happily married.”

“Ok, you win.”

You pull her closer—defying physics on how it defines close. Two atoms converging against each other—her body slots against yours, as it’s been attuned to for years. It was never a learned skill—just something that felt natural the second she first fell asleep on your couch in the spring of your second date.

There is hunger in the way
she turns her face up to you
that has really nothing to do with hunger
and everything to do with being known—
you knowing her.
You know the taste of her mouth
at every stage of her waking up;
warm and soft and slightly rough
from a night of breathing you in.
You know the sound she makes
when you kiss the corner of her lips.
You know the way her hand
finds the back of your neck—
and stays there,
as if it is the answer
to a question her body
has been asking.

And she has been asking. Her mouth has been begging for an answer ever since her lips first met yours—a question as silent as the breaths you both exchange and an answer as sloppy as both of your tongues make.

Your hand slides down her back under her shirt, a shirt where ownership is always a point of contention. Her skin feels like the perfect breakfast: milky, smooth, and some parts jiggly (you’re quite unsure if you’re thinking of pancake or a panna cotta, but if somehow there’s a meal that combines both, then that is her.)

“Jieun.”

“Hnng.”

“Wanna?”

“Mhmm?”

“Words, my love.”

“Yes—of course.” Her eyes finally open, wide and clear and looking straight into yours. “Yes, please, my love.”

Your lips sink into her mouth yet again—a warm pressing of lips, hungry and passionate. Her hands find you beneath the clean sheets—gentle, light as the grass when it sways in the wind, patient as the weather in early spring.

There it is—the all too familiar undoing of her, like being searched for by someone in no hurry to find you—not because you are lost (no, no, no) but because she already knows where you are. You slowly realize sheets might not stay clean after all of this, but that’s fine.

You have all morning—all day, really. Mornings that used to be didn’t have it like this; now, they have a pulse, you can feel them, you’re holding her hand right now, and you never want to let go. Not ever—not when it’s this good, not when it’s this perfect, not when it’s her.

Slow—
everything about her today is slow.
The slow parting of her legs,
the slow rise of her hips
to meet you—slick and ready,
the slow smile that spreads across her face
when you finally—finally,
slide inside her
and she exhales like a woman
who has been holding her breath
for the whole of the night.
Slow—
slow like the way you both like it.
Slow—
slow like the Sundays you’re used to.
Because Sundays
are days where you are not needed anywhere.
Because Sundays
you both just get to be here.

“Here,” you coo into her neck. Chest to chest under your shared duvet, her arms around your neck, her legs wrapped around your waist, and your faces so close to each other you breathe the same breath. “Here is the only place I need to be today, my love.”

The bed creaks slowly with the motion it hosts. She rocks slowly with you—a beat with no urgency. The sun gets to do sunny things while the bed gets to be laid by two horny human beings.

And her? She gets to be the entire reason you get up in the morning—except on Sundays, when the whole point is that you two don’t.

“Jieun?”

“Mhmm?”

“I love you.”

“I love you—” You can feel her lips change shape as she smiles against your mouth. “—even when you kiss me too early.”

“That wasn’t too early, was it?”