What She Sees When She Closes Her Eyes

Before dawn, I wake to her hands. They rest open on the sheet between us, fingers curved slightly inward, moonlight silvering joints that seem to have wandered somewhere beyond my sight. She slowly turns them over before my gaze lingers too long.

I reach for her anyway.

My fingers travel her wrist, the warm slope of her knee, the dark, damp valley of her hip. Last night she let me trace her spine with my lips—slowly, vertebra by vertebra—until her breath caught beneath my mouth. Outside, wind moved softly through the trees, a crescent moon slipping behind clouds.

She closed her eyes.

On the dresser, her pills waited beside the silk blouse she would struggle to button.

I kissed the hollow beneath her neck. Her eyes opened. For a moment, the room held only skin, breath, and the pale beginning of morning.

Then her fingers tightened around mine.

morning enters—

her hands remember the future

I caress

each finger