She entered the bedroom late but unhurried. After scrubbing some of the filth accumulated from sleepless earth-worn crusading off her face and and from beneath her nails with the wash cloth and manicure brush at the sink, she slipped into bed beside him. Her arms fell atop his. He remained asleep, still. She began to whisper all her celestial wishes, telling of how they could only come alive with him. Travelling alone only led to tired paths and stretched wounds and echoes of antique voices, promising only the events as far ahead in time as the months and recent years just passed. Reading the news from headlines that were already being recycled into news nobody could prepare for.
Into the darkness, she voiced the new doubts she'd uncovered in the corners of yesterdays where she'd looked for answers and antecedents and other loose ends with which to tie her own, thinking her audience too faraway in sleep to hear-
Did you ever love me?
He replied to her from the dark and the sound of his voice was too present to echo.
I loved you in sleep. You never left me there.
