Everything is folded up and airy when I’m in love the first time. You walked into my shop with that lonely immigrant look on your face following the elusive chocolaty scents of brewing coffee soon to be served in my Arabian Nights demitasse. You stare ominously at the folding chairs and tables, at the wisps of Arabic among the paraphernalia of blonde heads and dark beards.
I rub in the hand cream, slide it over giraffey age spots, sniff the petal scent. Marcus watches this ritual with unbridled irritation.
The breakfast sun melts over him like butter. I run my hands across his dips and hollows. No one else comes close like this – feels him soften in the slanting dawn, sees his stern facade pink and gild.
Before I married, I was a plume of gas. His hands grasped through me. Slowly, slowly, I set into that which can be held. Or be hurt. My cracked lips taste of summer on the turn. I press on raised veins on the backs of my hands, trace a map of mortality along my skin. Never to return to a noble gas, perhaps I can cling to another to become a compound.