I Know You Are Wide Awake

And weaving dream scenes about me

I know you are not sleeping.

Yes, your curtains are drawn, lights are off, eyes snapped tight. Not a stir in your room, nor a flicker of movement.

Only silence, thick as molten glass, fills the air around you; and the darkness — black and empty.

The darkness of your room has even the moonbeams fooled which though decorating the entire city in the silvery gown, outside your french windows, stop, waver, lose courage, and fall, fading away.

But, not me; I can tell you are awake.

For I can feel it.

I can feel the fingers of your mind turning my name over and over, like rosary beads, an endless chant.

Your mind’s eyes are grazing my back and it is lusciously sunny, deliciously warm.

I can sense the shiver in your body that is as sudden as the crack of a lightning bolt in the sky.

And it rumble — it sounds a thousand miles away from you in my ears, telling me all your intimate secrets.

Oh, you are smiling.

The corners of your lips rise. There is a warmth in your cheeks and rising in them a soft hue — it's color rosy as of the horizon of an evening summer sky.

What?

You demure.

Should I not check on you now?

You are blushing under your clothes. Should I not look?

But honey, it is not I who is eavesdropping.

You have invited me, conjured me up in your mind in your thoughts, and made me lie next to you as you shift and turn in your pretend sleep.

I can do it all night.

You know.

Just sit here and watch.

I can see you all night.

See you spin the spool of your imagination and make me more vivid in your mind.

See you raise your fingers and run them along the blade of my shoulders, the softest of touch.

See you leaning towards me until your breath and mine mix.

See you reaching closer until our lips brush.

And as the time outside will march ahead, and the night will deepen; as the old stars will fall and many new stars will be born; as everything in this world will keep on moving as it always does; in this constant state of flux outside, the time inside, around us — it will freeze, it will come to stop.

And I will look and look and look at your lips as they first quiver, then stretch, and then part in a silent gasp.