I woke this morning unable to understand why I felt like I was underwater. My limbs were light, buoyed by an unexpected lack of tension. Then my eyes opened.
Matthew came over last night to dream with me. I put on a red dress and purple black striped stockings and late I dragged him out for dinner. Witching hour by the time we walked ot the Drive. Wazubees was open, saviour of the hourly detached, so we sat by the window, grinning to each-other, quietly choking on our wine and water at a man one table over who was far too old to seriously answer his phone, “Yo, Talk to me homie.”
I catch myself headlight blinded by his eyes, his delighted smile, to everything else present. The way he shapes his words, brimming with precious spilled drop emotion, makes me feel like I’m in a story, every word a golden coin. It’s too easy how we co-habit without effort.
“You know, it’s only a matter of time until someone at the bank sees us out together.”
“That will be amusing. What will you say?”
“Well, I’ll have to tell them the truth. ‘That’s my girl friend'”
“I’m a girlfriend?”
“Oh-ho, you and the crossed arms and the leaning back unhappily. What’s this?”
“A girlfriend.”
“What, would you rather I call you my smootchie-poo?”
“Honestly? Yes. That would be better.”
We tried to go shopping after, walking across the dark street to the 24 hour market, but we left with only a small container of frozen strawberries and two cans of red bull. I’d said earlier that I was to take him up on Brittania roof, and so I did. The city gleams from there, a mad gasp of shining light. It’s so hard to make this place look pretty, I always have to be up high or breaking a law. It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t be a climber. My movement is lithe and elegant in comparison. I can still climb the wall there, scaling brick with the tips of my toes and fingers. It was freedom to know that I’m that much better, that I haven’t lost everything I used to do.