No 2: DOMESTIC BLISS

PHOTO BY LUCIA AUERBACH

REBECCA KOPELMAN

I lie naked on the carpet, reading The Faggots and their Friends, while you play piano in the golden light. 

[You realized immediately that this part was about you.]

Or maybe you do your makeup while I perch on the toilet, shaving my legs. Maybe you impatiently brush shadow onto my twitching eyelids. 

“Stay still,” you tell me, “quit blinking.”

Now, you get down to lie on the floor with me, to remove the book from my hands, to kiss me wetly on the lips.

[You read this and called it beautiful, but sounded a bit more surprised than I’d like]

I watch you slick your hair back before we go out, slyly make eye contact with yourself in the mirror. I notice the slight asymmetry of your top lip, the permanent sneer that alternates between endearing and infuriating.

[i felt guilty writing this, but it’s really not meant to be an insult]

You wish I’d sleep over sometime, but I prefer my own bed, my own company. Most of all, I prefer to comb my wet hair without a pair of relentlessly caring eyes watching me, holding me, making me beautiful when I’m not. 

[My father read this and told me it would only make sense to the person it’s meant for. He considers it superficial and adolescent that i don’t want to be seen while unattractive]

Allow me domestic ugliness, bleary-eyed dullness in the mornings and at night. Let me enter and exit your company an angel, made-up and shining, and do me the courtesy of allowing me to retire the halo once you’ve heaved into your warm slumber.

I’ll kiss you goodnight and turn out your light before I go, don’t worry.

[when i leave unexpectedly, you rouse yourself and follow me into the hall to scold me for going so soon]

Your sleeping body feels like home, to be sure, but not my home.