Winter white

You came into the kitchen as I made my coffee, walking like a ghost, drifting and tenuous.  All your angles were softened by sleep.  White t-shirt (stained), white longjohns, and, for no reason I could tell, your black dress socks pulled up to your knees.  Your limbs are as thin and stark now as a bird's legs.  This has been a wet winter, not snowy, thank god, and the constant cloud has leeched away all your warm golden hues.  In your newly pale skin your eyes are bluer than feathers, scribed all around by the same faint lines I noticed on my own face when I turned thirty.  We are watching each other get older, get paler, get lighter, fainter.  You apologized sheepishly for the stain on your shirt.  I laughed and poured the creamer into my coffee, smiled down at your bird feet on the tiles, and when I kissed your pale face I could smell on your skin the last warmth of fall going, going.  When I come home tonight I will fall asleep without you, and the room will be cold.  Some time in the night I will wake and your arms will be around me, brooding me against your pigeon chest.  I will be warm and soft as caramel in the sun, and my feet will be tangled in yours like a sparrow's in birdlime.  What a beautiful, happy trap you have laid for me.  I am glad each time it catches me.