I wake up to my headphone wires tugging at me. One of them still hangs out of my left ear, a reminder that everything was real. Trying to pull the blanket back over me, I imagine what you’d be doing right now. It’s 9AM for me, 7AM for you. Probably asleep. I imagine the photo of you I woke up to yesterday, you in the giant turquoise shirt that covers all of you just so, sometimes tempting me to imagine what you’d be wearing underneath. I remember how tiny little brown strands of hair curl around your face and underneath the glasses you always think look sillier than they are on you. And your eyes. your eyes.
I turn back on my left side, and think about what I remember from last night, how I was so very ready for a good sleep, and how you were on the verge of collapsing. How you kept apologizing, with the voice of yours that could take my imagination places, if I let it wander. And how I felt so helpless just telling you you didn’t have to be sorry, and there’s nothing wrong with you. I meant it – I still mean it – but it felt so … static. Like they were truths suspended in the thick gelatin of time that expands and fills the silences between us that I love so much. Sometimes that’s how all of this feels, suspended in time, all of us stuck inside, like our moments stuck in between my 4AM and yours. Maybe the stillness of it all will help me hold onto it a little longer, I wonder to myself.
I remember how, just before you fell quiet, your words slipped into some Lewis-Carroll-esque wonderland that I can’t quite recall, how it gave way to quiet in the middle of a sentence. It was the first time we didn’t say goodnight. And it was strangely comforting. I’d see you again, and we’d talk again. And I’d talk to you about how I’d tried again today to write, and you’d tell me about taking Lincoln out for a walk, and how you’re so close to closing your rings. Maybe we didn’t have to end each night. Maybe we just are. Suspended in the stillness of silence.