elf girl, sleep

“Are you coming tonight?” He looked at me and nodded once, waving his hand, gesturing for me to come inside.

He gave me a smile and I gave it right back, touching my hair. It felt right, finally, hitting my shoulders in all the right places, resting comfortably down my back.

I scooped a strand from my eyes and hid it behind my ear. The scent of honey and grape leaves, he reeked of an old photo album, the kind you never quite finish creating.

I leaned in, touching the cotton fabric of his shirt, straightening his collar. “There. Now you’re ready,” I said, then immediately corrected, “No — now we’re ready,” and I reached for his hand and he for mine, and together we disappeared inside.

The magic of an opaque dome: it protects against evil at night.

“Wanna know what I love most about you?” he asked me once, scratching the surface of my fingers, making circles as he touched my knuckles like tapping buttons to a rhythm that belonged only to us, and like singing a song he said, “I love where you come from.”

I was small — Dad was an elf, Mom was an elf, and so I suppose in some form of math that did not matter, I, too, was an elf.

“Is that all?” I smiled, not wanting more but mindlessly craving more.

(But let’s be honest, one more answer like that and he was gettin’ an earful.)

The magic of an opaque dome at night: it’s warm, and as long as you’re on the inside, you might as well be invisible. Because even though you can technically see outside, nothing outside can see inside, and so camouflage becomes yet another charming security.  

“ . . . and I love that your ears come to a point right here at the tippy-top,” he said. “Almost like they’re always looking up or something, sort of, I don’t know, symbolic to who you are, I guess, right? I mean it does make sense.” He said it so warm, so gentle, so earnest, a sound born from chest but conceived in heart.

I teased him about whom instead of who, to which he did not respond. Not a smirk. Nothing. Then I kissed him back, and in the spot he adored the most, not the lips and not the cheek, but right there on the edge of where lips meet cheeks — “Someone’s feeling dangerous tonight,” he teased, and I pulled myself away, more so a reaction than a desire or whatever, because “feeling dangerous” I most certainly was.

“Not just someone,” I told him eventually. “Me.”

“Not just someone,” he corrected eventually, then breathed, “You.”

The magic of an opaque dome at night, charming and warm: the trees outside are free to twist and warp against whatever weather they’re up against, and you’re practically just feet away, looking at it all like, Bring it on, because you can and all that and because I am totally safe right here! Because not only are you protected by the magic of a dome which stands just outside the realms of Whatever Math, but also because you’re half-awake and so close, so warm next to the person you admire the most in this world, nestled in between shoulder and chest and totally enveloped and entirely wrapped or whatever almost like wearing an armor, except with breath, with life — “I love you more than words will ever explain,” he said quite simply.

I knew.

I took his hand in mine, kept it close to my heart, fingertips to chest, to lips, and then to breath, pure and then simple.

I said it back to him. “Forever and ever,” I promised.

“ . . . and ever and ever?” he mimicked, another of his dry wisecracks.

I rolled my eyes. “Let’s go.” I used my heel to nudge the door shut behind us.

The magic of an opaque dome at night, all charming and warm with trees twisting and warping against a massive storm outside: it makes you feel alive.

“So how long are we safe for?” he asked me, a tidal wave of calm in his voice that’d put a volcano to rest. 

I told him I wasn’t sure. Not because I didn’t know but because I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stay awake.

Which, I suppose, was his answer.  

“So when you fall asleep,” he said, “that’s it? The thing falls?” I nodded once. Vaguely. “Okay, so stay awake, then!” He spoke matter-of-factly. I caressed his arms, touched his hands, pulled them in close. More security, I suppose. “Come on, stay awake!” His palms were callused, but his fingers were soft. How’s that for an equation. “Come on, sweetheart. Do you wanna get rained on or what?” I could feel myself beginning to doze.

I wanted to answer him, Or what, except I think my vote was cast the moment I refused to open my eyes. The thought of the two of us getting wet together, stumbling toward a broken shelter as we struggled to catch our breath, it excited me.

I smiled deviously behind closed doors, or behind closed eyes. I imagined our drenched bodies coming together for warmth under the comfort of an old willow, fleeing from the ferocious, unforgiving downpour outside. 

“ . . . come on, wake up!” he said.

I yawned into his chest. “Shhh. Sleep now, okay?” I squeezed his hand underneath sheets underneath blankets.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

Our voices couldn’t cut through a cloud.

And then it was quiet.

I could feel the warmth between us climbing and the breaths between us sharing and basically timing until our bodies literally moved in tandem, two hearts beating together in miraculous sync, not miraculous because there was sync but miraculous because the sync was ours, as in it belonged to us.

Which offered a comfort I could ‘t begin to explain.  

Perfect, pure, and then simple.

“You’re perfect.”

I smiled wryly. “So, what, you’re inside my head now?”

A chuckle which I could feel through my cheek and through the cotton of his T-shirt, the perfect night drew, or had been drawn, just like a paintbrush onto canvas, or like a stick inside of mud. And I said, “Don’t hate me but this is totally going to sound ridiculous,” and as he said nothing and as he did not judge me but as he instead listened to me, I said, “A long time ago, like a really long time ago, I saw you, like I didn’t actually see you but I saw you, if that makes sense?” A pause, I said, “ . . . so basically I believed in love, or I believe in love, I don’t know, I mean I have always believed in love, like it’s real and all that, but then I lay awake one night and so basically I lay there and I’m on my back and I close my eyes and I’m in my bed and all that and I’m relaxing or whatever except for I’m not asleep, and there you are, and here I am — and you’re this guy I never met before, and here I am telling you, this strange guy, that I’m in love with you or something and so basically all this time passes by and I go through life for a long time not knowing or — I don’t know, not understanding, maybe? — and, um—”

No way this was this hard. No way.

“So, anyway, um, yeah, I kinda had a feeling that something like this would happen someday?” I said, of me being in love.

And so it was. Ridiculous. Absolutely. Ridiculous. Completely. Utterly. Ridiculous.

“So, anyway.” I faux-yawned, humiliated, “ . . . I guess I’ll sleep now.” I shut my eyes, wondering why. Wondering how. Wondering that since when did feeling embarrassed feel this nauseating?

A snort, he laughed and he laughed and basically he did not stop laughing until he’d worked himself into a sweat, and then a cough. He clutched his chest, gasping. Laughing.

“Okay, okay.” I real-yawned. “Relax.” I was insulted slightly. Really, I was. But I also knew it was my own fault, so . . .

He kissed my cheek once. Softly. I couldn’t see him, but I knew what his eyes were doing. “Seven,” I said, and suddenly he moved. However, I did not open my eyes. Nor did I have to. “Ceiling tiles inside this protective opaque dome,” I declared. “There are seven of them.”

“Hmm.” He murmured something into the air, then counted with his fingertips, jabbing.  

I visualized him closing his eyes now, which, appropriate enough, timed out with the rhythm inside his chest, high and then slow. High, and then slow . . .

And then he was asleep.

And then I was asleep.

The magic of an opaque dome at night, all charming and warm with trees twisting and warping against a massive storm outside which makes you feel oh-so alive inside: we did not wake up again until later, some time after rest but before the sun.

I woke up first. “Sweetheart?” I blinked a few times, touching my head. I grimaced. I could see pieces of the dome and little else. I struggled against an ache slicing through my skull, which can only be explained as one for the books.

The wind wasn’t howling anymore so much as it was, I don’t know, yawning, or it was sleeping, or it was whispering.

In the distance I could hear little more than the faint and shrill of birds singing. “Sweetheart?” I called out for him. “ . . . sweetheart?” Again and again, I called out for him. “Where are you — where’d you go?” I fought branches, pulling aside shattered limbs as I crumbled against debris. I stumbled into trees, eventually found rest against a quiet, lonely cabin near the forest, basically this half-torn structure of stumps and walls and literally nothing else.

I had told him of my past. I spoke about a dream wherein I had fallen in love with him.

What then? What happened next?

The magic of an opaque dome at night, all charming and warm with trees twisting and warping against a massive storm outside which makes you feel oh-so alive inside: I was lost.

“Please, come back t’ me.” The hour was small. The temperature was low. I was cold, clutching my hands in my lap, shivering.

My teeth chattered.

The magic of an opaque dome at night, charming and warm with trees twisting and warping against a massive storm outside: the wreckage was brutal. Scattered debris lay wildly about. I fell asleep, I crashed. That’s what happened. Why couldn’t I have just stayed awake?

I could feel the thud in my body as my knees hit the dirt. I buried my hands in the earth, touching guilt. “Baby . . . baby!” I called out for him until my voice gave way.

I coughed. Hard. I clung to his name like reaching for a rope. Like grabbing onto hope.

The magic of an opaque dome at night, charming and warm: The days grew colder yet, and so long.  

I got sick. But I never gave up. Not for a second.

My search continued.

The magic of an opaque dome at night: My body grew weak. Tired. I lay half-awake with my hands under my cheek most nights.

And other nights I would force food, wasting most of it and hurling the rest.

It had been the weather. Or it had been the heartbreak. Or perhaps it had been a trolling combination of them both. I remembered Mom telling me something about heartbreak being real, when I was kid.

The truth is, I was truly and honestly and undeniably unafraid of that truth.  

I often dreamt I was an angel, and he my wings. I would wake up in tears. Some were happy tears, but most were the other kind, the kind not so easily wiped away into the dry, dusty nighttime air.

Then I’d reach for my eyes, touch my face with the hem of my shirt, and I’d continue to search.

Because I think that’s what love does. It searches. It scours. It fights. And eventually, according to Mom, anyway, it finds. “ . . . after all, sweetheart, I found your daddy, didn’t I?” She said so proudly now, like here she’d been and she’d found the infamous it, like it were some present wrapped and waiting for her beneath the prickly plush of an evergreen or something.

“No!” I demanded. Because it was not something that just happened. The infamous it was something unique to me. To us. Like it did not happen to anyone or anywhere besides here. Now. I sighed into the cool nighttime air, watching my breath disappear like a splash of water in daytime sand. “I’m sorry, Mom.” Never mind that how was she even here right now, she’d been gone quite some time.

“No, baby, you’re not. But it’s okay.” Mom’s lips spread into a smile which touched her ears. She reached for my chin with the edge of her thumb, the tip of her finger. I looked down at her fingernails even though I pretended not to, longer, even, than her ears. “I promise. Everything’s gonna be all right.” But still, I would tell her eventually how pretty she was, how beautifully and how delicately she applied her fingernail polish, designed by humans appreciated by me, and I would mean it, every word, because it was delicate and it was beautiful and she was delicate and she was beautiful, so beautiful, and I always wanted her to know that, and I never wanted her to not know that and so that’s why I didn’t want but I needed her to know.

“You hear me, Mom? Tell me you hear me.” Whether this was all real or not, I needed her to know. I had to tell her.

“I hear you, sweetheart,” she said. “I hear you.”

I spoke into the dirt, screaming into the earth, “I love you, dammit! I love you so much, and I miss you every single day!” I started to cry. I took a deep breath, keeping it in my lungs for as long as I could without passing out, or without popping like a balloon. I fought, struggled against my own breath as if it were my enemy, or as if it were a tug-of-war game or something.

“Be still, my baby, my forever sweetheart.” She stroked my hair, singing.

And I thought, If a name could belong to a person, then that name would definitely belong to Mom. She’d called me that ever since the day I was born, just over a hundred and fifteen years ago. If that didn’t deserve some kind of recognition, then nothing did.

“ . . . really? Has it been that long?” She smiled, realizing, and again I did not open my eyes.

I did not have to.

Instead I said, “I think so.” It wasn’t hard for me to believe it’d been that long. “In a way it feels longer, but then . . . ” I trailed off. I sniffed, then twisted half-around. My bones popped. My knees snapped and my body ached. Deeply. My stomach twisted and turned as I mustered the strength to climb only to my knees. I crept and crawled over into my mother’s lap, dropping my head in her folded legs the way I always have, suddenly and quietly and all at the same time, like suddenly my head was way too heavy for my shoulders and now it was time to totter over and relent into much-needed sleep.

Plus, her legs were warm. They’d always been warm, but now, for some reason, they were so warm. “I love you, Mom.” I tried to smile, but . . .

“Shhh.” She was crying. Why was she crying? “Rest now, my baby girl. It’s time for you to rest now.”

Her voice shook. Without opening my eyes I could see Mom, or I could visualize her. She was wiping her cheek. Then, without hesitation, she reached down and combed a strand of hair away from my pale green eyes, hiding it behind my ear.

And then her voice again, “Look.” I did. “Look who’s here, sweetie.” I could physically feel her sadness hot upon my skin. “It’s him,” she said, pointing.

I looked with everything I had left. “It’s you,” I said.

He stood in the open doorway of what appeared to be an opaque dome, which illuminated all around us like a candle barely lit. He came and knelt beside me. I struggled, reaching for the fabric of his shirt. I didn’t quite make it to his collar before my arm gave out, or the strength in my arm gave out.

I went limp. “I suppose you’re ready,” I said smiling, and he immediately corrected, “No, now we’re ready.” I reached for his hand and he for mine, and together we waited.

A dome, opaque and quite large, a charming security at its finest: I quietly, and quite gently, blew a strand of hair from my eyes, which streaked my cheek in what Mother used to refer to as The Perfect Shade of Black, and hid it behind my ear.

The scent of honey and grape leaves, he reeked of an old photo album, the kind we finally finished creating.   

I looked at him, and he at me. He gave me a smile and I gave it right back. And now everything was right.

Finally he said, “Are you coming tonight?” He looked at me and nodded once.

“I am,” I said, and released one final breath into the nighttime air between us, two beings plain and simply being, becoming alas, and I said, “I r-really . . . really am.”