ARE YOU JUST GETTING UP?

Joshua Bodwell

Two in the morning, I can hear it against the window. I roll over, take her up into my arms, hold her like a flower. The rain has gotten into my bones. I try not to think about it. It's useless. Outside, the train rumbles past the house. Here in the bed, I can feel something against my chest. I can't tell whether it is her heart beat or just the train.

It hasn't always been like this. I mean, there was a time when sleep was practically all that I did. I'd sleep all night, eight or nine hours at a time. I'd sleep during the day, inside on the couch or even outside with the sun on my face. Sleep, sleep, sleep. What a beautiful, perfect, simple thing it was. I never even questioned it. I never questioned it. It was like a dog's love: unconditional. It was always just there. It was always so easy. But now, here in this room, with the body of a beautiful woman beside me, all I can do is question it. All I can do is anything but sleep.

A few months ago I started asking too many questions that had no answers. I started wondering about my body while I slept. I wondered where She was while I slept. I mean, she was there in my arms but she was not. The light from the street lights shines in across her face, across her neck, across her upper chest. I lay beside her so many nights, watching her eyes twitch beneath closed eyelids. Where are you? I'd say, almost out loud. And never once a response, never once a sign of anything.

I lean my head down to where hers lay against my chest and search out her lips. In the darkness I lay my lips gently against hers. I kiss her so softly that it must seem as if someone is running a feather across her lips. Mostly I get the same response, a slight moan and her pulling her head away. In the morning she'd act as if nothing had happened. I'd smile and go along with her.

For the past three months, I'd say, I don't think I've been sleeping more than about a total of one hour a night. That one hour is made up of 10 to 15 minute increments of me dozing off. Those 10 or 15 minutes are all that it takes for my body to realize that it has fallen asleep and when it does, I awake with a jump. I sometimes startle her.

"What is it?" she'll whisper.

"Nothing," I'll say, faking a sleepy voice. "Just a bad dream."

She'll run her hand across my face, maybe down my chest. She does it in a very "mother soothing child" sort of way. She has no idea that in those 10 or 15 minutes I may doze off, those 10 or 15 impossible minutes, I fear that when I wake she will be gone. Vanished. Gotten up, walked out of this life and into another.

I can picture myself alone in the morning. I think of the bed all around me and it feels huge. I can almost hear the phone ring as I am lying there. When I pick it up it will be her on the other end of the line. She'll say something like: "Jesus, are you just getting up? It's almost noon." Then she'd say something about wanting to pick up the last of her things still left in the apartment. Paintings, flower vases, some books, that sort of thing. I'll say: "Ok, come over anytime." Knowing how hard it will be to see her face. Knowing that I'll probably end up breaking down in front of her. Knowing that she'd have to add something like: "Let's not make this harder than it already is."

And I will have to watch as she walks out the door with the last of her things. The books, the paintings, the vases. The vases that I used to fill with so many wild flowers for her. And those books, they will be full of flowers, too. Dried ones, dead ones, ones that she pressed there between the pages when they meant something. Those flowers will be all that will remain of us. Purple ones, yellow ones, white ones. All of them as rare and beautiful as I thought we once were.

And I will sit alone in the half-empty apartment and I will remember what she said that time when I first asked her if she thought we'd ever get married. She said: Hell, we've come this far.