"Thoughts of Elena"
(one rainy night)
I sit watching you. The way you lie there with your head off the pillow, your arm lying straight above your head, your little hand holding on the backboard. You lie there breathing slowly with your lips twitching. O-how I love to watch your lips, the way they move. Even when you sleep you bite your lip. Breathing deep, your shoulder jerks, lips still moving. I wonder what is in your mind. I memorize the way your hair lies damp on the mattress. My eyes follow the contour of your face. My eyes caress your skin as you lie there.
(I want to be lying right there beside you, but no matter how close you are, you are to far. I miss watching you sleep, sometimes I would wake-up and watch. I love to watch you, to memorize your mannerisms. The way your lips move. The way you breathe. The way you lay there with your head off the pillow, you r hair everywhere. I sit watching you for hours. )
Open your eyes, DAMNIT!
You, lie there again in your favorite sleeping position. God, how I love that position. Why do you lie there like that, you always do? Your hair it shines in the dim light as it lies on the mattress in many directions. In my mind I run my fingers though your hair again and again. My eyes caress your lips, the curves of your cheekbones, the dimple on your chin, the smooth skin by your eyes. When your lips move your teeth are white against the pale colored lips, orange cheeks, pink-white skin like Mikimoto pearls; through all this light comes shinning dark and soft like the summer night is your brown eyes (How I want to be in them.) So much to see and notice. Your muscles in your face tighten with a thought. I watch crease appear and disappear. The sheets rise with each slow breath. Your face moves with each thought. (If I only knew what thought went with what motionless movement.) Your hands are so small, how they cling on to things, how they lie.
(WHY!...I do things to myself. Thoughts flow so fast that I can not control them. They are free flowing; I just sit and listen.)
(I must learn to harbor my thoughts, they'll get me killed, but thoughts are from what I feed and they from the energy of the world.)
(The Rain, I love the rain, the sensation of the water dripping, drop by drop on my small body. I want to be there with you, WET.)
(awake reading Sam Shepard)
Tap, Tap, Tap, Tap, your fingernails hit your teeth. "A week from today everyone will be gone"
The warm brown eyes are dampened with a tear. I feel sick. I watch the tear find it's way down your cheek; then you brush it away like it didn't mean anything.
Copyrighted by Michael Cooke, 2000.