Long hair getting tangled on the wind. A blue eye. White teeth behind deep pink lips. Blue on blue, sea and sky. Skin getting tan under the salt. Those are all the memories I have left of you. Snippets of times when we were happy. When you were here.
I don’t want to remember why you left or when you did it. I don’t need those memories. I only need the memory of us by the sea and the salt on your lips.
I wake up, it's dark still. I have my eyes half open, caught in that state between dream and wakefulness. I turn on my bed, as I have done a thousand times before. Yet, there is something new. There is someone that catches me by surprise. There she is. Still. There she is. Again. She has been here for more than a hundred nights and, yet, it always surprises me. Every single morning, I expect to wake up to find my bed empty. Every single night, I think that I have dreamt of her, that she was never there to start with. I carefully touch her arm, as if she were a mirage that could banish as soon as reality surfaces. Her skin is warm, slightly damp from sweat on this hot summer night. My eyes have gotten used to the total darkness of the room and I start to see her silhouette, her short hair plastered to her forehead, her eyes fluttering under her eyelids deep into REM sleep. I wonder what she is dreaming of. I wonder if it will be one of those nights when she will remember about her dream and tell me about it in the morning while she drinks her coffee. She breathes softly, her crooked nose making the air whistle a bit. She is very self-conscious about that, she must have told me a thousand times to wake her up if she is being so noisy. I don't care. Her lips are parted and I can see her teeth between them. I know that if there was more light I could see her freckles, but I will have to imagine them. I am tempted to caress her face, trace the line of her nose, of her mouth, burn in my memory the feeling of her skin. Because I am not sure if she is not going to disappear one of these days.
She mutters something in her sleep and then smiles. Her smile, even in a dark room, fills my heart with light. I find myself smiling in return an automatic response I can't seem to control. She shuffles, I wonder if she can feel me staring. I get closer to her and hug her loosely. Even sweaty she smells good, I don't know how she does it. But again, whenever I complain about how I smell, she smiles and tells me not to worry, that she loves it. I bury my nose on her hair and kiss her on the neck, softly. Still asleep, she shifts closer to me, our curves locking together in place, my breasts softly cushioning her spine. At this moment there isn't anything else in the world than my skin on her skin and her soft breath filling the room. At this moment I don't worry about her disappearing. There is only me and her and this dark room.
