I'm brushing my teeth and leaning against the wall.
"Poke, poke," I hear. And feel. They're light pokes in the stomach and shoulder. Goofy affection, and I'm still straining to shake off morning lassitude. I don't poke back.
"What's wrong?" He's noticed. I'm not bouncing right now.
"I'm all right,"
"You don't look all right. What is it?"
It's the tenderness that sends me straight over the edge. One tear slides out of my left eye, but I'm not sure he sees it. He can hear it in my voice, though.
"I think I'm sleep-deprived. I'm tired. I feel like maybe I need a vacation, but that won't be for a while."
"Maybe not, but there is the weekend," he reassures me.
I clutch him close to me, then, hoping he doesn't think I'm a neurotic freak. I can't blame this on PMS; that was last weekend. All I can do is fault the springtime, with its bright mess of allergens and heat. I'm a winter creature, born on an ice-shard of time and space on the freezing East Coast in December. Spring is a memory machine, a searing electrode that activates I am five years old, and my crayons are melting on the radiator, and I am sixteen and doodling on my Converse. I don't know why this is.
The first time it happened was when my family moved into a new house in Sunnyvale, California. I was nineteen. Perhaps it was the unpacking of boxes, the time spent in smells of new wood and carpet cleaner. Old smells, the scents of transition and recollection. I stood in a sunbeam on the tilted front lawn and let seven years old and the lego city Paul and I used to keep under the bed and lightsabers made of curtain rods wash over me. I told my father later,
"I've been having all these weird vivid memories about my childhood in the past few days."
"Me, too, he said.
We did not continue the conversation. We didn't need to.
In this present May, where I'm climbing into the car, my eyes are still downcast and I'm telling myself, You can't just cry for no reason. They're only memories, and not unpleasant ones.
Matt tickles my knee gently and smiles. I look up into sincere eyes that hold no disdain or embarrasment. His expression does not say, "Stop it, you're being lame," it says, "Hang on a moment, and you will start smiling." He knows me better than anyone alive. And he is one of the only people, ever, that I've been able to very occasionally find hints of emotion in even if they are silent.
I can't help it. My mouth flickers at the edges and corners force lips into an arc. Then I laugh, and at this moment I am sunshine. My true nature: amused, irreverent, amazed. I can never stay pensive for long, especially not while Matt is prodding me in the leg and grinning and letting his tongue poke out impishly whenever I raise my eyes.
"You know," I say, "You've poked me so many times this morning it's like I've been run over by stampeding hamsters,"
He laughs and I laugh again. We're on our way to work. He will drop me off and pick me up later. We'll touch our hands together first so we don't shock our lips with that first afternoon kiss.
There is no proper ending for this, because it is still being lived.
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