Cinder and Smoke

She’s lying on the sofa as I come in. I take in the ashtray coated gray with her disappointment. The raincoat discarded on the floor giving a shape to impatience. Her hair is straggling out of its clasp. She looks so utterly beautiful with her head turned to one side, exposing her long white neck.  She turns to look at me and smiles, “Bear”, she says, and I realise she’s drunk again. “Cm’ere, babe, I’ve had such an awful day”, she rises slightly from the sofa and fixes me with those gorgeous eyes that I fell in love with. I loosen my tie and look at her. I don’t say anything. I know if I do, I’ll say too much. Too much will come out. I drink in the way she’s draped herself, I drink in how the slightly faded dress has clung to the small of her back. I drink in the alluring lips that can look mocking, that can look condescending and even now, sometimes have the capacity to look alive. I avoid her eyes. “Well?” she says. I walk into the bedroom and I shut the door.

Running water. Cold water. Drench me. Numben me. Help me to feel something. Make me feel alive. The shower needs to be fixed. It either gushes scalding water or ice-cold flush that sears you with its intensity. We intended to fix it when we first moved in, but somehow we never got around to it. We were too busy, preoccupied with other more important things. There was so much to do, so much to explore. The smell of the varnish as we came in, the hardwood floors, the linen sheets that she had excitedly bought and that we had stained and thrown away. The chipped cherub that hung crookedly on the inexplicable single pillar in the living room. Her. Me. The feel of her hair as it fell on my shoulders, the comfort of velvet darkness, no time to think or even bother to try.  Then there was work. Coming in from an incredibly draining day of reading and listening, and trying to make sense of it all, and then finding her still in bed. She would be writing, scrawled sheets lying around on the floor, with her tiny, painfully spiky handwriting. She would never use the computer when she really wanted to write.  It was one of those things that are endearingly quirky in the beginning and then the cute-sy uniqueness of it all wears off when you see sheets of paper flying around the room. It’s funny but seeing her still curled up in bed at the end of the day, didn’t irk me as it would now. There was this feeling of coming home, and peace.  Once she saw me, she would abandon her work, this smile of undisguised pleasure would take over her face and she would jump me. Yeah. Not very subtle is it? Not terribly classy or romantic, but it was, it was. The spontaneity. Her impulsiveness. Just her, made me alive. Alive, and gloriously crazy.

“Give me your hand 
And take what you will tonight, I'll give it as fast 
And high as the flame will rise”