The Small Hours

[Butt-Man360]

morning glory

There is always her. There is always that much, at least.
Her beside me on the bed, yet I am still alone. Alone in that thin, fragile space between dead of night and daybreak—the melting procession of sunrise evidence that we live in continuums, cyclical rather than polar. The division of days exists only in the calendar, measured by clocks and watches, not nature. There are no different days in nature, only the repetitive cycle that just is. Day is not separate from night, nor is it the absence of night. Rather, day is a part of the night. The two bleed together in streaks of violet, orange, and crimson at sunrise and sunset. And night is darkest in that short hour before morning burns away that black, vacant space. Things are the most peaceful then—the horrors of awakening seem so distant, detached. This is my time.
There is a certain stillness at four in the morning, the air somehow lighter, freer, which affords the conscious man time to think in perfect clarity. As sleeping has always been a difficulty with me, my slumber interrupted often during the night due to the apnea, I have often stared into the soul of the world at four in the morning. I have come to the conclusion that this is the best time for thinking. However, sometimes this much clarity of thought can be dangerous. When the mind is this honest, this clear, it is sometimes tough to hold it together, to keep yourself from breaking down. Sometimes the thoughts and ideas that come to mind are terrifying. And I face the small hours alone. Yes, she is beside me in the bed, but I am essentially alone. The solitude of four in the morning is a wonderful and powerful thing, yet, like too much clarity of thought, this much solitude can be dangerous as well.
Our bedroom is cold, and there is the faint smell of something rotting.
The digital numbers of the clock radio cast a dim, greenish light over the bed, coming from the nightstand on my side of the bedroom. Awakening violently in a fit of apnea, I open my mouth wide to suck in the cool air, to breathe. I swallow deep and taste the decay lying beneath the smell of her perfume and lotion. I stare into the wicked face of the clock, the blurry numbers like the teeth of a splintered grin. Except for the greenish glow of the clock, the room is filled with a heavy, enveloping dim, all shadow and contrast in shades of grey, like a photonegative. The only sound is the soft, peaceful hum of the ceiling fan and the air conditioner buzzing in harmony.
Her two suitcases sit packed in the corner of the room, ready for travel.
Ready to leave me.
I shiver from the chill of the room. The air conditioner is on high, the ceiling fan moving in patient circles above us. So cold. I am wrapped tight in a thick blanket in addition to my sweat pants and t-shirt. She is wearing the black nightie I dressed her in—the one from our wedding night that she hasn’t worn for so long. In spite of the heavy coverings, I am chilled to the bone. I am hogging all the sheets again, and she would take them back if she were awake, giving me that sour, disapproving look she so often does. I will have disappointed her again, as usual.
My back is turned, but I feel she is there. Over time, I have come to know her. To expect her to be there when I wake in the middle of the night. Careful not to startle her, I turn over and toward her. I inch in her direction, curling up beside her, because it is always warmer on her side of the bed. Or so it used to seem.
These days there is a dank chill in place of our prior warmth.
I gaze at her as we lay together, and with her back to me I see her as more of an outline. The pale hue of the clock radio falls over the curve of her high cheekbone. I make out the furry wisps of an eyebrow. She seems so peaceful. A curl of dark hair hangs over her forehead, the rest spilling over the pillow and down her back. I study the lines of her face, so well known to me. Known to my eyes, my fingers, my lips. Shadows resting on her cheek, the skin of which is round and puffy, bluish in color. Her smooth, rounded jaw and pouty lips. I would love to draw her just now, sketching the lines of her face in abstract. Just giving off the impression of her form, then filling in the rest with a thick charcoal pencil—capturing the essence of the night as it falls over her beautiful, sleeping face. When finished, I would wipe a blackened thumb across her nose as a signature, darkening the skin for her to find in the mirror, to let her know that I was there, that I have been here all along.
I breathe in the smell of hair conditioner and perfume and smile, relaxing. The smell reminds me of many things, mostly of my youth. It reminds of women I knew before her. And it reminds me of her. My olfactory system takes over as I take in the smell of her hair, her body, and the cool air of four in the morning. I inhale the cocoa butter lotion she uses to moisturize her skin before going to bed. Despite our differences, she has let me apply the moisturizer these last few nights. For those brief moments, it felt like everything was alright. But beneath the clean scent of cocoa butter, there is the faintly perceptible smell of something fetid.
Her cigarettes sit on the nightstand on her side of the bed, untouched for the past three days. The smokes are sleeping next to a half-emptied glass of water, a book, and her reading glasses. I love seeing her in glasses. There is something pure and beautiful in them, something real in the way she wears them. And I love the way they magnify her gorgeous, hazel eyes. Sometimes I feel that I could sit for hours just watching her read, taking in the beauty she doesn’t realize she has. But she would just think that is as weird as everything else I do. She doesn’t understand many of the things I feel. And say.
She doesn’t understand that all of the things I do, and have done, even the things that hurt and irritate her, I do, and have done, out of love.
I drag my feet over the edge of the bed, and stand up on the cold hardwood floor. My weight lifting from the bed causes the balance of the mattress to shift as I rise. Her body shifts slightly in the bed, and I remain still, hoping I don’t wake her. Waking up always seems to instigate her.
The air is necessarily chill. The frosty air in our bedroom is metaphoric of our relationship, but she doesn’t realize how cold it gets. She doesn’t feel the cold shiver that tightens the spine and numbs the toes. How could she? She could never know because she is never up at this time of the night. These, the small hours.
Outside, the world is a still life, a thumbnail sketch. Inside we are a tableau. I feel confined, like we are castaways stranded in this island of a bedroom.
I wrinkle my nose at the carrion smell in the room.
She wonders why I sleep in almost everyday. She thinks I’m just lazy, but it’s not that. It is because of my time, the small hours, this emotional deconstruction at four in the morning that belongs only to me. It is here alone that I am happy, but she would never understand that. So I never tell. It is here that I hold her.
Her two suitcases sit packed in the corner, collecting three days’ worth of dust.
In here is safety, security. Perfection. Everything in my world is perfect—until the morning wakes us from this tranquility. But here in the small hours, everything is as it should be.
No matter what, there is always her. I have that much. The rest of the day, I may forget why that matters. But here I remember.

the cold shoulder

My arm relaxes on her body, and my hand falls over a supple breast. I brush against her, and find myself suddenly aroused.
But what will she think of this? It’s been so long since we’ve made love. Four months of sleeping inches from each other every night, yet never laying a hand on one another. After these years together, the passion has died. I can’t say exactly when. I can’t look back to a singular, decisive moment when it all went wrong. It was more a process, really, I think. Like the shifting from night to day. In nature there is no moment when one becomes the other—the cycle just happens. Like our relationship.
But tonight, after these months of the cold shoulder, she doesn’t push me away as I ease her onto her back. I move my lips over her face, and, with my thumbs, I gently open her eyelids to look into those empty, hazel eyes. I move my hands and mouth over her body. She is accommodating, allowing this, not pushing away, but she seems so frigid. She doesn’t respond as I would like. I try to please her with my mouth first, but can’t get much of a rise. Of course, she must still be tense, what with all of the fighting and the arguments lately. And the threats. Lately, in the heat of the argument I have said and done irrational things. I said these things because I was grasping at air, trying so hard to hold. She was going to leave me, and I knew it. She had told me so many times.
Then, three days ago, I found her two suitcases packed in our bedroom.
But she had stayed, at my request.
And now, we are even making love again. Our relationship has at least returned to this level of sanity. And if we are capable of coming this far in three days, I can’t help but be filled with hope that we can make this relationship work out after all.
I mount her, but she is indifferent to my advances. I flick my tongue over her pale, ruby nipples, and nibble gently on the bluish skin of her neck. Placing my hands on her thighs, I push her legs apart and force myself inside of her. The way is tough, but I’m persistent. The reception is cold, but comforting. I want to please her, for us both to enjoy this moment of release together, but it has been so long. Four months without, and only sparingly prior to that. I feel so warm inside, so happy to be with her, that the lovemaking ends rather abruptly. I arch my back and groan. She receives me. No matter how cold, she still receives me.
Then the shame comes, the shame from being such a disappointment. She makes me feel so inadequate, but tonight she doesn’t have to. I know it myself. My body fatigued from the exertion, I cradle my face into her neck and weep, knowing that I am not much of a man at all. My body grows limp against her. She accepts me in this moment, allowing me this weakness.

refrigerator heaven

We tried so hard to have kids, but every month the blood would come, thick and crimson, bringing sorrow to those beautiful eyes of hers. I think that is when those hazel orbs started to grow empty. Each month the blood would come, then she would return from the bathroom with this helpless look on her face, looking to me to do something. I was supposed to have the answers, but I failed her. I have failed her many times since. I felt so powerless, so ineffectual. The tests were done, and we discovered that it was all my fault. All my fault. She could do it a million times a million different ways, but, so long as she did it with me, the blood would continue to flow, right on nature’s cycle.
She started going out until late with her girlfriends, partying, she said, rather than staying in and talking with me. Then she was two months late. Then came the miscarriage. She lay on the bathroom floor, crying with her pants about her knees, blood dripping down her thighs, a putrid smell in the air. I tried to hold her, but she pushed me away. And she refused to flush the toilet. She lay like that for hours, blood crusting on her legs and clinging to the sides of the toilet bowl. She kicked her feet at air, like she was pushing away some sinister element. Some dark emotion. She had tried to hold it in for so long, she said, and I noticed the purplish-red stain in her pants, evidence that she had indeed tried to keep the dead baby inside of her as long as she could.
We didn’t make love again until tonight. She told me she was going to leave, and that’s when I threatened her. I threatened her because I didn’t know what else to do, and that seemed to work for a time. For a few more weeks, at least. They weren’t very happy weeks, but at least she was here. With me.
But before long, the threats became routine. Then three days ago, she tested me. She did the unthinkable. She packed while I slept.
She should have left while I was still sleeping.
As I woke, she told me she was leaving, and through blurry eyes I could see that she was serious. I pleaded, I begged. Our bedroom was so hot and stifling. The summer sun came in strong through the window, the air conditioner was off, and the ceiling fan buzzed sluggishly on the lowest speed. Her hazel eyes pierced through me with rays of hate. I felt humiliated, inadequate. I raced to the door, getting there before she did, keeping her inside our bedroom, so she would have to hear me out. I was going to convince her to stay at all costs.
She told me to get out of her way as if I would just stand by and let the most important thing in my life walk out on me. Just as she couldn’t flush the toilet, I couldn’t let her leave, even though I knew that it was lost. She tried to force herself past me, but I pushed her away. She swung a heavy suitcase at me, knocking the side of my head hard. I was dazed, angry. And afraid of losing her. I gripped her hard by the shoulders, but she wrestled me tough. I held her down on the bed. I needed to get her to stop struggling. She had to stop struggling. So I pinned her shoulders to the mattress with my knees, and I forced a pillow over her face. She squirmed and kicked her feet at the air. I heard her muffled cries, and I begged her to stop. I begged her not to do this to me, not to make me do this. She only had to stop struggling, but was too stubborn. She wouldn’t stop.
When it was finished, I turned the ceiling fan above us on high, and turned the air conditioner to the coldest temperature. Since then, there has been an awful chill in our bedroom, forcing me to sleep with my clothes on and hog all the blankets and sheets. There is also the ever-growing smell of rotting flesh. The perfume, cool air, and cocoa butter lotion can not suppress it for long. But I have grown somewhat used to the smell.
And at least there is her lying beside me. Still pure and beautiful. Still mine.

the awakening

She always looks more beautiful the morning after the lovemaking. Her pale, decaying flesh stands out in sharp contrast to the deep ebony of the nightie. The dark color of the fabric reminds me of the hour before sunrise, her pale skin completing the cycle of night to day. Night to day, day to night.
I look to my love, and I kiss her purplish-blue forehead with a gentle good morning. I realize that I forgot to close her eyelids, that I have left them open all night, and she greets me with those empty hazel eyes. Though the color is fading they still stand out against the bluish hue of her face, her puffy cheeks. I can’t stand the accusing stare of those eyes, making me feel as inadequate as ever. I place my thumbs over her eyes and gently draw the lids shut.
And I feel secure in knowing she will never try to leave me again.

[darkangel101]

its kind of haunting.