The Night Poet

"I don't know, eight o-clock, I guess."

"And you? What time is your first class?"

"I need to meet Val in the library before our nine O'clock English lit seminar, so about the same time as you. We should sleep now, it's late."

"What the hell time is it?" I asked.

"Almost one-thirty."

"Damn, yes, we better."

We pulled the covers over us and huddled in the warmth. I always relished the feeling of sleeping nude with a girl after sex, how our bodies, radiating in the afterglow of passion, pressed together. I found Nelly's northern European creaminess sensuously delicious. She was different. It was a big reason for my attraction to her.

We were both asleep within minutes. Dreams eluded me as I burrowed through the tunnels of slumber. Perhaps there was no need to dream. If dreams were the manifestation of unfilled desires or wishes, then any longings I may have had, had been thoroughly satisfied. So instead, my sleep was an unmarked drift with no sense of time.

Then, I suddenly awoke. Not sure what it was. A noise outside? I looked at the digital clock on the nightstand. Ten minutes after 4am. Nelly was asleep. The only thing I could hear was the soft sounds of her breathing. There was a pressure in my bladder. Was it my urge to pee that stirred me? Didn't think so, the sensation was not that urgent. I pulled back the covers and walked across the cold hardwood floor to the window.

The moon had travelled to another part of the sky, so now everything outside glowed amber from the tall street lights below. The curved arc of their arms suspended fiery bulbs over their domain like an ancient watchkeeper tending a medieval street. All was quiet and still, and for the first time I saw the city as mysterious, dark, and deep. The dark faces of empty windows stared back at me from the three-storied brick buildings across the street. What kind of lives existed behind them? Right in front of me, a whole collection of human stories, filled with secrets.

Her notebook. I shot a look back at the bed. Ensconced within the puffy lump of sheets and comforters, Nelly was deep in sleep. I reached for it.

It was a yellow, hard-covered moleskine. Yellow, she had told me once, was her favorite color. I slipped off the elastic band wrapped around it and opened it to the page marked by a silky thin strand. Just enough ambient light from the street allowed me to read. Scribbled across the page, written in a gothic handwriting distinguished by curly flourishes flowing at the beginning and end of each word; the slim, elliptical loops at the top of her "f"s and the sharp tails of her "g"s. Words that could only be written by a European hand.

Today's date.

Why do I search in strange, far away places,

for things I cannot have.

I climb the moonlit towers of imaginary castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities.

I stare out night after night, for the guardian of shadows; the empty windows stare back, as if blinking through a lethal stupor.

If they could only ward off madness by dulling my memory.

I suffer the appalling salvery to the dismal phantasms of my mind.

Only the silent. Sleepy, staring windows can tell all that has lain hidden.

Slipping into the warm, bubbly bath

I welcome the drowsiness which is the only thing that helps me forget.

My heart sank. I closed the book then carefully slipped the elastic band back over it. For the first time, I felt her pain. Turning my head back toward her, I was relieved to see she hadn't moved. I set her notebook back down on the sill, hopefully in its original spot. Sex was one thing, but now I had violated her most intimate space. She must never know.

Outside, the snow had stopped. The backlit sky had given way to dark indigo as an indifferent moon left this spot and continued its journey across the heavens. Was the magic over?

But I did love her. Why the hell did life have to be like this?

In just a few hours, the sun would rise. The curtain of night would lift, and the layers of the city revealed. I crept softly to use the bathroom. I figured I might as well, it would be my cover story for why I got up in case Nelly noticed I had left. Inside the bathroom, I took note of the assortment of colored bottles lined up on the edge of the tub. That was one thing Nelly liked about this apartment, it was one of the few in this price range that came with a bathtub. I thought about how me and Desiree used to take bubble baths together in the early days of our relationship. How frothy white foam slid down the curves of her body and how I watched the gentle swing of her breasts as she dried herself off. There are a lot of things we used to do. A lot of things that used to matter.

When I slipped back underneath the covers, Nelly turned over and slid closer to me.

"You're cold," Her voice was small and vulnerable. It carried an echo of sadness.

"You can warm me," I replied.

"I will, baby. I will."

When morning came, she climbed on top of me and filled herself with my erection. We engaged in a long slow grind as the city outside came to life. Cars whispered down the street, delivery trucks beeped as they backed into loading docks. Someone was shovelling snow.

After riding the final ecstasy of her climax, she fell forward onto me and buried her head in the pillow with streaming tears. The sound of her sobs forced me to weep too.

It would soon be time for us to return to the reality of our daily lives. The only thing different between them was that I knew nothing was ever going to be reconciled. The next time we would see each other, it would end the same way.

Will Nelly and I ever take a bubble bath together? I don't think so. There are some things that I just couldn't share with her. And that caused her great pain.

For now, our relationship would have to exist, compartmentalized, like one of the disparate pieces in an exquisite corpse.