She is my favorite, this early in the morning. Before feelings rise, and responsibilities awake. When the skin is turgid and tight, and eyes are full of glaze, the gulls beckon words to keys. “The world is small,” the letters on the screen read. It needn’t be any wider than the width of these sheets. It needn’t worry about the splotches from this invisible ink. For this early in the morning, I look down at ivy-wrapped feet, and wonder. Why can’t I help, but grin?
Why can’t I help my lips from pushing against hers until she can do anything but breathe? Why can’t I wait again? Until she’s late again, feigning another kiss in the wind? I can’t. I move to her cheek. To the edges of her chin, then the creases between her ears, until finally, she breathes, and a puppy-sheltered tailwind wreaks warm against my beard. Warm enough to separate the ice blue from her everglade-green.
“Bebusan,” she whispers, with one lid open, hardly holding the winter’s weight. Hardly whispering the name I gave to her, and the name accustomed to me.
“Bebusan,” she whispers, then falls back asleep.
This early in the morning, I walk alone, on trails of broken nails, and catch them beneath my feet. Some are blue, others nude, but most are mixtures of mauves and pinks. Stray hairs sway from money leaves and their shimmers make me squint. I have no words or sanctimonious prayers for the mountains up there. What stone can I etch-in to prove that I am enough to wield this name? Her name. For this skin - it doesn’t make life clear enough. This mind - it isn’t tough enough. This brain - it isn’t large enough - wide enough to know all things. No, this mind forgets. It forgets most things. This mind is clumsy, for words come in, and most of them pass right through—
No.
Those words won’t find wind. Not this early.
For this early in the morning, I only grin at the wind in her step behind me.