love/sick

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we lay silently under the string of lavender lights strung across the wall above the bed, pathetic and still.  we are both sick.  sick as dogs, angry and miserable inside out atoms.  we lay together and treat each others bodies with the gentleness we routinely refuse our own.  stroking hair and testing foreheads and cheeks for too much warmth.  i kiss his shoulder rather than his lips.  enough damage has already been done.  swaddled in deep grey blankets, we convalesce.  the timing is bad but not as bad as it might have been.  i should have known some wiley germ would eventually catch up to me.  i lucked out not getting sick while on my trip and i am thankful for that.  it would've been awful to spend time stuck in bed rather than drawing against the tall, white walls in my huge, beautiful studio or singing karaoke at the pizza parlor/bar.  still, this misery is miserable.  such a waste of life to be sick.  time slips and fails.  i guzzle more NyQuil and hope that tomorrow all will be well within my body again and that the impetuous rhythm of waiting tables and making art will resume with as much fury as (more fury than) it had before.

i roll over and his hand finds my back.  he rubs me gently as i lay with my eyes closed against the pressure in my sinuses despite his own discomfort.  i marvel at this.  his kindness.  a moment of total pleasure inside this stubborn illness.  i marvel at him.

his hand stops and i roll the other way.  i want to see his face. 



every night, his face is the last thing i see and i want it to go on being that way. 

.

sigh...

i haven't had more than 5 hours a sleep every night i've been down here. i am tired. i took a nap and am still tired. and now i'm drinking a cup of re-heated coffee. the coffee i made and promptly forgot about when i realized i should just go take a nap.

we are driving back tonight, all night. and i am happy to drive all night long to get back to our little, safe, warm, happy home. happy as a person can be. and tired.

and then a strange and grey afternoon...

on second thought, maybe beginning the day with "Satan Says" was a bad idea. my thinking has been, off and on, fairly morbid and sad all day. and the grey drizzle that persisted here in san francisco didn't help. i did manage to get out for awhile in spite of the weather but then proceeded to get my self lost looking for a gallery i've been hearing about but have never been to and then wasted a 1/2 hour looking for parking once i finally figured out where it was. once inside, i felt pretty happy but, i must say, all in all it's been a pretty rough day. having no plan and no one to talk to is pretty much the definition of a bad day for me. and if one has to be alone, it is much better to be alone inside your own home. i miss my sweetie like crazy. after 4 years together, sleeping in the same bed, drinking coffee in the morning and all that goodness, it has become hard to spend a night away from him. see! look what the rain and sharon olds have done to me! arg! or could it just be the wage of love? ha! i am a sappy romantic, after all, and he is my favorite person in the whole world anyway.