Everyday Aubade

RUTH DANIELL

— for James, on the occasion of our engagement

“If one has found true adult love, the fairy tale also tells, one doesn’t need to wish for eternal life.”

—Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment

But this love makes me want forever even more. More Monday night TV, sour candy, summer and your hands cool on my back, rain, mist, more buy milk on the way home and chocolate in gold paper.

And more nights like these: your feet at the end of the bed, pushing the sheets out of their folded corners . . . Sleepless, tipsy from the champagne—no, drunk with decision—you tell me how you knew you wanted this, how extraordinary my specific death will be for you. But you could die first. It’s the only way we imagine leaving—last breath and the light that separates us. It’s 4am: the new ring shines or doesn’t shine in its velvet box, the sheets twist and warble on the bed, you rub my naked hands and we make promises in the dark.