the_way_we_slept raze you would be on your back, one arm reaching for something that wasn't there, the other bent at a sharp angle, fingers tracing slow circles against the side of your face. sometimes you would grind your teeth. i was always surprised by the sound. not gritty like i thought it would be. a deep churning that seemed to come from somewhere far away. sometimes you would whimper. sometimes you would say words that weren't words. sometimes the words were very clear. "i love you!" there was so much joy in that. "do the stars scare you?" "i'm up before ten, and usually in bed by then." sometimes you would let out this great laugh. small, but unafraid of its own sound. one of your cats would push a plastic storage chest on wheels into another, larger storage chest, setting off an explosion of sound in the dark, and you would think i was the one making all the noise. "you're being loud, babe." still asleep. not angry. playful. i would be awake, watching you, feeling your largest cat wrap his forelegs around me, hugging me like a person, percolating against my chest. feeling the cold air come in through your bedroom window. seeing the sheer curtains dance around. listening to the sigh of a city that couldn't get any sleep either. wondering if your ex who wasn't really an ex was coming over with a baseball bat to cave my skull in while you slept through the whole thing, a cocktail of sedatives warping the violence into a muffled soundtrack for whatever you were dreaming. thinking if that was the price of feeling my body next to yours, i could live with it. 210808 ... tender square insomniac nocturne when sleep pulls his porous bones to coral depths, he curls into a wreath of fragile lattice. our days are not enough— i want a total saturation. in my dream, he was the lighthouse i biked toward at dusk, crossing empty cracked-skin fields to reach him. awake with ache, he lies beside me, still; his breath an eddy in the dark. the ceiling fan whirls a ship’s wheel, mimics each passing minute as i count my breaths to ten. i can’t drift from shore. where does he wander without me? 210808 ... tender square didn't mean to jump on this thread so quickly with my own post raze, but your story reminded me of a poem i had abandoned over a year ago that needed to be realigned again (still a work in progress). i love the way your story slowly unfolds with the dream dialogue, and the description of the cat "percolating against my chest" was a standout line. the sudden violence of the end surprised me and i like being surprised. i would say to you, raze, you should really send this stuff out to journals because you have both talent and skill with your words (and that's hard to come by), but i hesitate to invite you into the ongoing stream of rejection that is this life. i've got resources if want them. 210808 ... unhinged jump away tender square our backs facing each other no cuddled entanglement cold much like the way it took me eight_months to say i love you and those three words pushed me completely out of your bed onto the hardwood floor of the things you kept hidden that locked all the confused pieces into place formed the picture of why i had been grasping for but a couple years later the why doesn't matter and i sprawl across the empty space in my bed where you used to be like an entitled housecat dreaming of other men who can't, won't share a bed with me 210808 ... raze just to reiterate what unhinged said: please feel free to jump on anything, anytime, anyhow. i love your writing, and i love that you're here. part of what i've always loved about this place is the way other people can add their own accents and impressions to something you've said, their own truths or untruths, and then you get to watch as this seed you've planted flowers into a collaboration you never could have anticipated. now i need to try and process the massive compliment you just gave me without my brain and my heart exploding at the same time! 210808 ... kerry so much magic in this red today! we looked funny together, you had a good foot on me at least but i was the big spoon wrapping my arms around your waist like we were riding some dream horse i tossed and turned, still do and you laid there quiet and calm as a corpse 210808 ... tender square i've heard someone refer to being the big spoon when they're the smaller person as being the "jet pack" and i just love that image. 210808 ... kerry that’s really lovely especially on certain nights i imagine 210808 what's it to you? who go blather from