a poem about a freckle

October 2083 - Amelia Bradshaw is 28, Drew Bruty is 27.

* Warnings: NSFW/kids - and unabashed poetics! Soundtrack: "Colorblind," by the Counting Crows. *

She smells like organic lemongrass and ginseng, which leaves her skin soft and milky smooth. Did he know that natural soap is gentler on the skin than even the most moisturizing body washes? No, he didn't know that. But he does now.

She eats zucchini. He ate french fries before he met her, and now he knows that red bell peppers contain more antioxidants than green ones, green tea more flavanoids than bottled beer. She buys fresh fish for its omega-3. Now he knows what omega-3 is - he never knew he needed it, but she insists that he does. He doesn't need to know why, but she'll tell him anyway.

It's not about ideals or glamour. It's science, she tells him. "Because it'll make you live forever," she says. "Or at least a really long time. I want you to live a really long time."

It's Columbus Day weekend, a long weekend, a bank holiday. It's October and the leaves have all turned and begun to fall. It's too cold outside to spend the weekend at the beach, or outside grilling with friends and family. The movie playing on the TV they've seen a hundred times before, so they'll talk instead. He'll try to make her smile. Her smile is not hard to come by, but he can't get enough of it.

He'll recite her a poem, made up on the spot. Not the kind he could publish, but the kind that rhymes a little, and makes her laugh. He never would have been her type, sweet and ridiculous, if he hadn't tried so hard to prove her wrong. She's never laughed or smiled so much in her life. She tells him these things, but he can see it clearly anyway.

He kneels between her knees and she wraps her arms around him. He likes to gloat a little. "You always said funny wasn't your type."

"It was," she says. "I just didn't know it yet."

It's Columbus Day weekend and they have nothing better to do then lay around and talk, eat, make love, and sleep. What else do people do on Columbus Day weekend?

They have nowhere to go. He has poems that can wait until she goes back to work. She has homework that she'll catch up on later.

Instead, she'll fall asleep straight after dinner, and he'll lead her up to bed.

He has an apartment he never stays in anymore. In his sock drawer, he has a box with a ring in it. It's been there since July, tucked underneath rows of clean black socks. It's there, and when he bought it, he thought he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew where he'd take her and what he'd say. Some wordy speech, some fancy trip, some exotic place she's never seen. And now none of that feels good enough.

She's done all of this before, the longterm relationship, the domesticity. He always wondered what went wrong, those times before. "They just didn't stick," is all she'll say. She doesn't like to talk about them. Her failures, she calls them. More than just one. "Why would I want to talk about that?" she says. She laughs them off and buries them under a guarded smile.

Instead, she says, "You should move in. You're never even there anymore."

"Okay," he says.

She arranges the rest. "Your bed is better than mine," she says. "But I want to keep my couch. You can bring your lamps, but you're not touching my kitchen. Not a single piece."

"I like your kitchen anyway," he says.

"We don't need your dresser, mine is big enough, we can share."

He thinks of the sock drawer, the box with the ring in it. "Share?"

"Yeah," she says. "What, you didn't think we'd have two dressers?"

"No," he says. "You're right."

It's a long weekend, cold outside and raining on and off. The movies on cable they've seen at least a hundred times, and they're not sure if they're motivated to invite company over. He's taken a few minutes already to check in with his friends. She talks to her mom...

For a couple hours.

She she hangs up the phone and comes to wake him. It's stopped raining outside. It might rain again later, or it might not. "You wanna walk over to the park and get some coffee?" she asks him.

"We'd have to get dressed," he says.

"Oh, yeah," she says. "I can make some coffee. We should have some dinner too. You want to invite some people over?"

"Nah," he says. "We'd have to get dressed."

"Right," she says. "Some other time."

They go to the kitchen to think about dinner, for a minute. They decide to kiss instead.

They make love, and they sleep. It's what they do, and not just this weekend. They can spend countless days inside, losing themselves in each other. Occasionally they remember that they have friends or cousins or mothers or uncles who might remember them.

They toss between the sheets in the morning, letting their eyes open slowly. It's a long weekend, they have all morning to spend waking up, rolling from one side to the next, never losing hold of each other for a minute.

When they finally wake, they greet each other with some "good morning" love. They've been dating nine months, and she doesn't talk about the ones who came before him. But she tells him she's never had this before - this deep, emotional lovemaking, the kind she needs to sleep for hours after. He believes her, because he's seen her evolve in these past months, as she slowly lost that carefree detachment she held onto so desperately. She always told him she was only interested in friendship.

She still is, she says, only interested in friendship. And he's not just her lover, but her best and most trusted friend in the world.

She tells him she's never really felt loved before now. That alone breaks his heart, because the crippling disappointment in her voice proves that it's not just dramatics, it's no plea for sympathy, but simply the truth. She's never really been loved. He doesn't understand how anyone could shrug her off so easily.

Before him, she's never had a man whisper in her ear during lovemaking. This shocked him - never? He told her, "How could someone be with you, and not tell you how beautiful you are?" So he whispered to her, about how beautiful she was, about how much he loved her. It was strange for her at first, but she grew to like it. She even grew to love it, the tickle of his breath on her neck, the reciprocity of it, the echo back of this shared moment. And she felt it - love.

When they finish, they have nowhere to go, and nothing to get dressed for. He traces the curve of her lower back, and her mind drifts lazily to her work, even though she doesn't need to be back for another day.

"I have a portfolio to present on Tuesday," she says.

"I should probably write something," he says, touching a finger to her nose. "I think I'll write a poem about this freckle.

She smiles. "I dare you," she says.

Like she is, beautiful in theory, but in reality, even more than he can describe. "I don't know if there are the right words," he says.

She recedes into a thought then, a sad one. "Because you wanted to know," she says. "Alon, he cheated on me, twice. He eventually left me for one of them. And Jason, after living together for so long, he just wanted to get married. A week after we broke up, he met the woman he ended up marrying. Like he never even meant it. I knew he never meant it. I guess they just get bored with me, that's what happens."

"How could anyone ever get bored?" he says. "That was their problem, not yours."

He was so eager all that time. He had the right idea, but at the same time, he had it all wrong. He wanted her so badly that he didn't know what he was actually getting, a woman, real and damaged.

It isn't that he doesn't know her - he's known her for years - but he never knew how fragile she was. Underneath that bold independence she was so delicate. When she stopped receding to those safe hidden places of doubt and distance, of saying she's not ready, of saying she doesn't care, or doesn't feel, when she let him in, really let him in, he saw it. All the wounds, all the rejections, all the scars, the doubt, the fear. He saw it and it terrified him. It's so much responsibility for one man to hold.

But now that he's seen it, how could he turn away?

So now he has an apartment he never stays in anymore, and in his sock drawer, he has a box with a ring in it. For months it's been there, hidden, waiting for these words that always came so easy, to tell him what to say, and how to say it. Finally, he realizes that the words aren't going to come. They were never going to come because they were all wrong.

All this time when he was trying to think of more, what she really needed was so simple. She's been given the speeches, the excuses, the lies, the propositions, and she doesn't need any more shows.

His words feel no weight, and there's only one thing that feels honest, the only thing he can think of. "I don't want to just live with you," he says. "I want to marry you."

She smiles. "I want that too," she says.

And the ring in that box, and all those exotic words that always came so easily, are left tongue-tied, lost in a jumble of clean socks.

*******

(footnotes: Drew gets what he wanted // her failures // the ring in his pocket)

notes:

This one didn't really fit the mood of the piece. They're really quite goofy together, despite the somber undertones. Or maybe it's just impossible not to grin like a fool when he whips out that mirror like that, lol!