Telia

Sometime after midnight, the bedroom light still burns down. She fades by degrees, occasionally pausing to fold her body in a position more conducive to what we should both be doing. She's not quite there, and I know because she keeps flinging prolonged, sultry, eyes-mostly-closed looks as if to say, "You're missing the best thing here..."

I continue to crick my neck and flex my wrists and strain my eyes, bent over the pulsing life of our lap top. You can't force good art, right? But she's not alone. My vitality also wanes until I am a new moon. Not fresh, not full, but empty and dark. Not even new.

Incandescent orange filters the room in strange colors like an old photograph. Like I'm not me and she's not her. Like maybe we're people from a long time ago living in this room doing what we're doing. Steadily the rhythm of her body slows to long ins and outs casting a small circus of shadows in the bedsheets. And its crazy because I realize that in spite of her complete unconsciousness, she is still more alive than I am straining, awake and red eyed over this humming computer trying to eek out my last semblance of cohesive thought. It would be better to cast off the moorings of wake, drifting into dream where i can cast living shadows with my wife and renew.