The dishes rest forgotten in the sink.
Two glasses of wine – expensive, partially emptied, and reminiscent – lie on the floor like two orphaned kids who have nothing to lose.
One glass stained with Mac lip-stains, while the other – mine – carries the gentle silhouette of a breath that I had finally been able to let out after several summers of holding it in.
I never wear lipsticks. She does. She wears them like tattoos. So perfect, so painted – but never in a way that eclipses the rest of her face.
She’s reading a book as I write this – probably, Kafka. Or, Camus. Or, Donna Tart. It’s always any one of the three. She likes poetic architectures of misery, of existential crisis, or both their absence thereof. She likes to educate herself on the psychological warfare within one’s mind. And along the course of her spiritual journey of a kind of reading that comes with layered closures, and everything in between, she admires a good mystery or two.
We didn’t exactly get married last night. No, it was more of a community funeral of our past selves, which later metamorphosed into a high-on-hormones make-out session (behind closed curtains, of course), which further paved way for a soft, kind little ceremony with her dog, and my mama, wherein we succumbed to the prospect of giving each other everything that we each have to offer, all, for the rest of our lives.
It wasn’t a wedding. No, but she kissed me raw, and gentle, and promising, and somehow, all my doubts, apprehensions mostly, dissolved into the thin hush of the sky.
We share an apartment tonight, and for how many ever nights that come after the clock strikes twelve. She called me beautiful before she crawled to her side of the capacious bed my mama got us as an impulsive, last-minute present earlier this morning. It doesn’t have palatable pillows yet, nor a proper bedsheet, really. I complained about that, I did. But then my lover, my beautiful muse, decided to spill delicious sun-warmed watermelon extract on the mattress, and I thanked my lucky stars we were both lazy to lay out a bedsheet this noon.
I asked her, exhales before I started drafting this, if she thought we were wives. She smiled – sultry, lush, and Natalie Portman-esque – and I swear, it was the smile of an arsonist. A romantic one at that, who loves to set my veins on fire. She crooned like a wild child, and told me we weren’t wives. I sulked. She laughed, teased a little, and then went on to say something stupid, something messy, but something so honest that I could taste it on my tongue.
“We aren’t wives, but we are extensions of each other. And that, in itself, is so much more organic than any transaction we could make out of a lawful marriage.”
Organic extensions of each other. I sighed, then. Because this is what being loved by a woman who corrects people’s grammar for a living, sounds like. And it is everything out of a winged dream.
I sigh now, even louder, as I recount her words in kind. She doesn’t hear. Of course, she doesn’t. For tonight I confess not to her, but to the pulse of the pelting rain outside. I confess about that one time she kissed paper, and devoted it to the goddess that she made of me. I confess about the ribbons of love she weeps for my soul, the chamber of comfort she has ever ushered me into anytime my blood was blue, the constellations she named after us just so the world has something to remember us by, long after we have turned into the stardust that birthed us.
I love her obscenely, and there is comfort in the way I know she would show up with flowers even on days I give myself no reasons to celebrate the life I’ve lived thus far. She would cook for me, and I would thank her for being the blanket that keeps me warm on cold November nights.
She sets the book down from her lap. I look up. Her auburn eyes are on me now. I bite my lip. “How’s married life treating you?” – chimes a text notification from my sister who I forgot to invite yesterday. Oops.
I break into a breezy laugh at the thought. She doesn’t. She observes in verve. I know that look. The laugh subsides, and the first crack of thunder permeates the aphonic sanctuary of the space between us. I go still. She goes stiller – if that is poetically possible.
She breathes finally. A sound that tickles the cracks beneath the epidermis. I carry the tension into the flesh, and set my laptop aside.
“Newly unified couples don’t make it to bed before dawn.”
“We’re both tired from doing nothing. And lazy. And you have work tomorrow.”
“That I do, and that we are. But, I don’t want to wake up tomorrow, and drift on unfinished business the entire day.”
The silence settles, not heavy—but aware. The kind that listens, the kind that waits.
And no one tells you this, but life after a happily ever after doesn’t shimmer. It hums. Soft, quiet, constant. It’s dishes in the sink and watermelon stains. It’s a love that curls beside you, breathes books, forgets invitations, remembers grief, and still chooses to stay.
It’s not a fairytale anymore. It’s a home.
And God, what a beautiful, tiring thing that is.
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