see her

Each morning she watches the sun come up from his bed she hates herself a little more, imagining how sad she’d be making her mother.  If Ma knew how desperate her intelligent daughter can be.  How much she craves love.  Settling with a guy she’d caught a month before with a stupid grin and a giggling girl in his locked bedroom.  Still, he sweet-talked her back to where she lies now, thinking about last night.  She remembers saying she didn’t feel like it – too tired, dreaming of someone holding her without moving.  He didn’t listen and snapped her thong off anyway, and it’s fine.  They were drunk then, and now she’s silently burping out Captain, her vagina itching like it’s tryna reject something.  So she turns to see him like maybe he’s someone different this morning.   

But he’s sleeping and he’s snoring a bit and she smells like him so she breathes it in.  Her nose to his sheets, savoring the scent, but the smell is only appealing while in his bed.  So Step 1 is always the hardest.  She waits beside him for forty-three minutes before finding the courage to move, but the frame always creaks.  He flinches.

His back to her, she scooches closer to feed off his warmth.  Begging in her head, wake-up-wake-up-wake-up.  Or at least, hold-me-hold-me-hold-me.  Even snore-your-gross-hot-breath-in-my-ear-as-you-spoon-me-and-I-wont-even-care-that-your-breath-smells-like-morning.  Step 1 is always the hardest because she imagines he’ll grab her before her sole can reach the ground.  Take her wrist as she climbs over him and mumble into the bed with his hair matted against the fabric.  His face smashed into the pillow like a glob of paint left sitting and consequently thinning across a smooth surface.  She’ll tug away and his grip will slip to her hand and he’ll squeeze it.  He’ll ask the pillow to stay.  She’ll hesitate and he’ll take her docile state as cue and lean forward and hug her waist tight, secure.  She’ll feel petite-pretty-loved.  He’ll fall backwards with her in his arms, the mattress plunging but the padding will fluff their fall and they’ll giggle and he’ll roll her on her back and lean on his side and kiss her face somewhere other than the lips.  Push her hair off her forehead, his thumb molding the clay of her skin.  He’ll say she’s perfect.  

But that was just the first time they touched.  

Maybe the second, possibly the third, when his eyes were salivating for his shiny toy, but this was the eighth, ninth or tenth.  She had lost track and now he looks at her like some stiff towel he’s too lazy to throw in the washing machine.

Step 2 and he’s flopped over to his stomach, taking advantage of the negative space she left behind.  His body sinks into the mattress like a thank god there’s more room.  She imagines he’s drooling.  He’s not drooling.  His breath putters off the material, followed by a low whistle that sails across the sheets.  She lifts his T-shirt off her body and wills his eyes to pop open.  To sense her naked form.  Pulling the ripped up rag off with one hand raised high like they do in the movies and never in real life, she clenches her body so it’s tight as if being seen.  She imagines a sliver of light from the cracked open shades illuminating the top of her buttocks and her waist. 

He snores. 

She finds her bra and her thong and her sweater and her jeans, rifling as if homeless through trash, her head pounding with an ache.  She noiselessly dresses.  

Step 3 and feet are light but heels are deliberate, holding her weight up but begging gravity to crash her ankles down, let the floor crumble.  She wants to flip around and scream at him and hit him repeatedly with the pillow and tell him to wake-the-fuck-up and maybe he’ll like her rage and grab his own pillow and they’ll fight with feathers flying, laughing, falling on the bed again where she loves his scent.  

Step 4 makes her nose crinkle.  

Step 5 is quick. 

As is 6 and she can smell him on her skin, in her clothes, throughout her hair.  Before he was man.  He was pine and washed-sheets, a-touch-of-outdoors and well-deserved-sweat but now the smell is boy.  It’s three-week-old-gym-bag and lactose-intolerant-gas.  She almost sneezes and she can’t wait to shower him off her.  To perfume her body with pomegranate soap and vanilla bean shaving cream and lemon lotion and coconut hairspray and a cloud of Coco Chanel on top.  

Step 7 and she thinks about calling to him, but in the silence she always seems to forget his name.  Even when she remembers it, the name never sounds the same.  So she’s afraid to speak, afraid to ask, to talk, even to kiss before he does.  

It’s Step 8,9,10,11,12 and she’s at the door.  It’s always hard to open and it always shrieks, can’t even call that sound a creak.  She shoves it open and the scream is so loud he wakes.  Pops right up in bed with a stunned expression like he’s been thinking about something super-stupid-dumb.    

 “Everything OK?” he asks and his voice is still dreaming. 

“Yeah. I’m leaving.” 

 “Oh OK.” 

He’s back down.  The bed groans with him.  She doesn’t turn around. 

“Bye.” She spits venom at the door, pushing it open so fast it’s a siren malfunctioning, tearing at air, bleating.

It’s 13,14,15,16 her eyes on fire, crossing the threshold, hair sticky with sweat, her vagina crawling inside her abs. 

It’s 17,18,19 and he yells that he’ll see her soon.