My Unseen Lover

It might look like I’m alone, but he’s always there, just in the shadows…

I have an unseen lover. I look at myself in the mirror, naked, and see myself the way he sees me. Not a catalog of stretch marks and squishy bits, but a fleshy landscape to be explored with fingers and lips.

I can feel his eyes on me, taking in my gently curving breasts, the roundness of my belly, my scarred but supple thighs, the auburn highlights in my hair that only seem to flare in the ambitious pre-summer light. I can almost feel him touching me.

I fall in love with the image in the mirror. Me, naked. My lover, invisible behind me.

I put on my clothes. Slowly. I usually don’t like to be naked, but suddenly, in this moment, I want it. I want to be seen. Not just by him, but by myself. I want to look at myself. I want to feel and see everything it is to be in this body even though that’s so terrifying to me.

But there are things to do. The day has only just begun. So I compromise by taking the greatest care with which to dress myself. I wear a skirt so my legs can still feel bare underneath the fabric. I forgo panties and a bra. I want to be as free as possible.

I slide a pair of earrings into my earlobes while looking at myself in the mirror. I can still feel him just behind me. Watching, but not touching me.

I sit down to write, but he is there, next to me. I can feel the couch shift under his weight. He only teases, pinching at my waist, nipping at my neck. I laugh and push at him, but my hand doesn’t quite make contact, sliding off his arm which isn’t where I expected it to be.

I want to stop. I want to lie down and let him cover me, my legs opening in welcome. I want it right there with the curtains open, the sun streaming in, neighbors occasionally passing by. I don’t care what they will see.

But I need this energy for my work, so I keep typing. He knows that it’s time for me to funnel myself into my writing so he combs my hair while I work, braids it, lands a kiss on my shoulder before retreating.

I know he’s watching when I step out to get the mail. Not watching, actually — glancing out the window for a moment to see the sunlight on my hair, to watch the breeze move it across my face. Just for a moment before he moves back into shadow.

In the evening, I go for a walk, when the light is soft and gauzy, the last rays of the sun cutting across the landscape in golden shafts. The birds are singing one last song before nightfall, wildly spinning and streaking through the bed of cattails along the south side of the path on which I’m walking. A red-winged blackbird swoops over my head in warning as I pass by the old weeping willow — he doesn’t like me getting so close to his nest.

I can hear him breathing. I can hear the soft percussive rhythm of his steps in the rocky dirt. I can feel him just behind me. Always just behind me.

I make dinner, dropping a handful of spaghetti noodles into a pot of boiling water, cutting into tomatoes that pour forth their seeds and juices with each slice. I cook them in a cast iron pan with onions and zucchini.

He stands behind me again, pressing up close to me as I handle the knife slowly. Carefully.

When he presses his lips against the crook of my neck, the knife falls from my fingers and clatters onto the countertop. He takes a handful of my hair into his fist, roughly, pulling my head back, but he doesn’t kiss me, as I expect him to do. The pot of spaghetti threatens to boil over.

I cannot see him. I don’t know what he’s doing, what he’s thinking.

He only presses against me, my hip bone bruising from the pressure of being pushed against the cabinets.

After dinner, I sit on the couch and wind a few tangled skeins of yarn into neat balls. At one point, I make the tangles worse, the strands of yarn tightening against one another, binding together, rebelling against my attempt to impose order upon them.

I feel him pull my feet into his lap. Press his fingers into my heel, then my arch.

I take a breath. Try again. The yarn surrenders in my hands. The tangle works loose and I continue winding.

In the bathtub, I lie in the water alone. He doesn’t join me. The tub is too small.

I keep my eyes closed, letting myself feel the embrace of the water. My breasts are buoyant and my hair undulates like snakes against my shoulders. I feel him stroking my thigh and we sit like this, lost in the meditative rhythm of water and desire until I grow cold.

I don’t mind getting into bed alone. Because I know I’m not alone.

The sheets and comforter are a warm cocoon around my body, still swollen and damp from the bath. His arms soon make a second wrapping around me — a tighter, warmer one. I let out a little sound of pleasure, for I know what’s to come.

He rolls me onto my stomach, and follows, hovering above me, his hands moving over me, eventually pulling me up onto all fours. He likes it like this, where I cannot see him, where he can remain in shadow, known only to me by touch, sound, and scent.

And though I want to face him, my body doesn’t care in this moment, only wanting — needing — to take him in. I stretch back for him, the gates of my thighs wide open.

He covers my hand with his, slides his fingers between mine and we both instinctively squeeze them together, just like the yarn I’d been untangling not so long ago. And we move in a perfect dance, without thought or hesitation, until the sheets spill off the edge of the bed.

I wake later, when the moon is high in the sky, and the room is so dark, I can barely see anything but the outline of the window. The bed might look, to an outsider, as if it only contains one person. As if I am alone.

But I know I am not.

I know I am wanted.

I know I am loved.

I know I am not alone.

Author’s note: This story was inspired by the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche. I hope it comforts any of you who are alone during this time of social distancing, who are separated from a lover, or who are just plain lonely. Much love to you.

© Yael Wolfe 2020

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