It is the same at the end of each quarter. We go days without seeing one another awake. You stay up late studying and fall asleep on the couch, and in the morning I find you with the light still on, your arms and legs crossed to fit the narrowness of the sofa, holding your breath in your sleep. When you make it to bed I wake in the early morning to find that our limbs have entangled, our hands hold each other, and I am sweating from the heat of you. It is during these days that my desire to know what it is like to be you overwhelms me. I would hear, if I could, your voice in my head reciting strata and faults, composing your dear confused sentences with their awkward flourishes, your voice distorted by too much nearness, the dissatisfaction one always feels with one's own sound. It's the loneliness that makes me want to draw so near you that nothing of you is unknown.
Your work slacks folded on the back of the chair, waiting to be ironed. Through the familiar smells of our home the scent of your absent body rises and strikes me as clear and brief as a triangle note, and vanishes again, too busy to stay even a moment more.
