For the Pretty One

For the Pretty One

[And it’s probably somewhere between truth and fiction.]

Sometimes, I indulge in the fantasy of my body curling in the space beside yours, contorting to fit the gap between your chest and my pillow, between your skin and the edge of the bed. And I think to myself, maybe I can do this. I could wake up to the imprint of you on me one day.

But I am not the woman who stays. You are not one to wait for anyone to return. We will only ever find each other in the contrivances of circumstance. Forcing something more from the transience of fleeting looks and eyes cast down would cause us to lose the sweetness of all this. And what good could that ever do?

Because I’ve been offered something akin to this before.  And at first you feel as if there were a hundred smiles folded within the days that follow each other like a string of beads, like prayers off a rosary.  But you wake up one morning, and it all just seems too sad, and you find yourself walking away.

At least I did.

Originally published on Tumblr, July 2010.