love letters from ruby

4. ruby brushes her teeth

my love

i open my eyes to the sound of the alarm. i don't immediately know what day it is. hopefully saturday so that i can turn over and think of you some more for as long as i'd like. but then there would have been no alarm at all. the morning star is still out. i think, can you see it too? i swing my legs from the high bed and my feet find the woollen mat. i put the cell phone on the trolley next to the window to make my bed while i keep an ear out for the second alarm. when will i see you? what is the weather like where you are? what is the first thing you do when you open your eyes? do you sit up? do you lay there with closed eyes imagining me getting up, swinging my legs off the bed? what are you wearing to sleep in? is it anything i've seen? i switch on the radio and put the phone back on its cradle. i take my toothbrush from its charger and dip it in the toothpowder (i'm a fastidious brusher of teeth) while the water runs into the deep bath. when next i see you, i will ask you of all you do while you are not with me. what is your routine where you are?

I am obsessed with knowing the insignificant stuff. i want to know how many cups of coffee you drink in a day. i want to know what you eat. i want to know if you have taken a pill for a headache or whether u have cut your finger and how long it took until it healed. i want to know about your bowel movements. i want to know who and what your eyes look at and  who touched you, even by accident. i have imagined too many times to remember, what i will do when i see you again. i will lay beside you on our bed. i will lay on my left side and i will look into your eyes. i will want your serious eyes to look in mine and investigate what it is that you see there. i want to see your understanding of my love for you dawn in yours and the amazement that will come with the realization of that truth. and i will touch your face. your cheek, i will stroke softly 'till you turn your head and close your eyes and kiss the palm of my hand. your eyes. your lashes, i will lay my hands on your lids and softly press the palms of my hands on them to know their texture and temperature. i want to feel the shape of your ears and breathe on them with my warm breath so that your ears know my mouth. i will look at you for days. thirteen days, maybe. or thirteenhundred. i will move only to the bathroom that is a meter away from the bed, during that time. i will be looking into your eyes when i sit on the loo.

i stand with the dripping toothbrush for a minute before i put it to my mouth, gathering my thoughts.  i am always thinking of you. at work my office has a window looking onto a corridor where employees pass constantly, a meter by a meter window. i get frowned at by colleagues who see me sit and do nothing, just look blank and somewhere else. but...i can live with that, i can live with that. what i seem to find increasingly hard to do, is to live without you.

evening comes and it's time to brush my teeth. i wonder what you're doing. what are you wearing to sleep in? is it anything i've seen? who touched you by accident today? do they know how fortunate they are?

the evening star is out. i think, can you see it too?

if i could speak to you now i would ask, may i spend tonight with you?  please say yes?

fetch me.

ruby