Eden
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Her room, after dark. The sky sitting pretty as a picture, in the window above her bed, light years away but at the same time close like memories. It’s a deep midnight blue, an ocean turned upside down.
I’m lying there with her, our clothes decorate her hardwood floors like limbs of trees in forests, scattered and fallen, after a heavy wind; a storm you never want to end.
Intertwined, our clothes make love as we do. I’m tracing her, running the tips of my fingers along the lines of her face and the lashes of her eyes, long like willows, weeping, and the curves of her hips and the soft place in between her legs, hot and wet like summer rain.
She whispers in my ear, “You don’t love me.” I say, “I do.” Her eyes open, mirroring a heavy moon that could fall out of the sky. She whispers, again, “You don’t love me. You love the rooms that made me.” I smile lightly, pressing my lips to her ear, “Then tell me about these rooms I am so in love with.” She begins slowly at first, then quickly, like someone retelling a story they have not told in some time.
You love the room where I took my first breath, where I was born from my mother and my father, gasping, screaming and then silent, taking in the world for the first time like an apple pressed against Eve’s lips. You love the room where I became the child of Adam and Eve.
You love the room where I discovered my differences and suffered the consequences for these differences at the hands of the kids who were all the same. Where I learned to shed tears and learned to survive.
You love the room that came after this, small and claustrophobic like a thought you can’t shoo away, but beautiful nonetheless, where I first loved myself, running a brush through my hair as your fingers do now. You love the room where I learned that loving myself is enough.
You love the room in the apartment that was finally my own, in the city next to the train that sent earthquakes through my window and into the vase that held the wildflowers on the mantle, where I discovered the embrace of a good book and experienced the religion of getting words down on paper. You love the room where I learned to be a flower in the wild.
You love the room I am in now, the room we are in now, where we’ve fallen in love slowly and then quickly and then totally. As if destiny wouldn’t have it any other way. You love the room we will make ours.
By Nora Sermez
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