books, a photo of her and her best friend from two birthdays ago, and a large, sprawling, in the way plant of some kind. Dinner is still on the stove and won’t be cleaned till tomorrow after a fight. I’m still picking at it anyway. There is a tv that isn’t ours and it’s logged into streaming services that we don’t pay for. None of our glasses, silverware, or plates match. Some were stolen. Some were won. Some were found. Some were broken and so were shoved to the back or salvaged into pencil cups. 

My desk is an awful reality and I wish it were more poetic. Even in my dreams, the messes I make are not the ones I want. I want coffee stains and legal pad drafts of genius and sticky notes of questions and a typewriter alive with scars. There is a typewriter, but it is seldom used. There are coffee stains but are not remotely flattering.

It’s mostly cluttered with desk toys, some notes I don’t have the heart to throw away, and books I keep for reference but never use. All my important writing is on my computer anyhow. 

My record player is a wonderful reality I don’t have to imagine. It’s beautiful. It plays vinyl, CDs, tapes, radio, and has bluetooth. I keep my records in a milk crate. I used to love music. It used to be a stimulant, but now I use it as more of an anesthetic. But occasionally, I do have the wherewithal to pull out the right album at the right time and force myself to sit down and enjoy it. I can name five good things about myself, and one is that in every reality, I always have great music taste. 

I am still on the floor and I don’t know what to do. I am waiting for something but I don’t know what. Inspiration. Motivation. Sleep. A pang of hunger. There is a restlessness inside that I don’t know how to expel and it won’t let me close my eyes until it’s tired itself out. I grasp desperately for some kind of emotional anchor, and then I see the couch. It’s a terrible couch. It’s really a mattress partially bent in half on a device that flattens out into a bed. Strange blankets drape the back side with even stranger pillows on either side near the arms. I think of all the nights someone slept over on that couch. All the times someone questioned how it folded back up. The forgotten jewelry and money that made its way behind it. The backaches it gave all our overnight guests. I love this horrible thing. 

It’s 1 o’clock in the morning and the world stops on my behalf. I try to appreciate how much I love my life but I can’t. The need to practice gratitude makes me resentful of what I should be grateful for. Everything is exactly how I want it to be and yet my fist is clenched tight. I don’t deserve this. I don’t want this. I am not the bohemian I wish I was.

I am no artist. I am no man. I am no worthwhile breath. I am docile, pathetic, and confused. 

She walks in and conducts the tempo of my heart. She wears a band t-shirt from her home town and a pair of boxer shorts. Her hair is the thick, bristle end of a brush, and each wave is a dark roast brush stroke itself. It’s short but it’s still in the way. Her eyes are jade green, the texture of the iris is patterned like coral plant viewed from above shimmering water, and the eye lashes are beautiful and defined like a gothic fence post. Her lips pout, even when she smiles. She rubs her eye, looks at me, furrows her brow, and assesses the situation. 

“You’re on the ground.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Are you okay?” 

“Yeah”. 

I don’t hear my own answer, I don’t comprehend it, and I don’t care. She shuffles over to me, her feet plopping and slapping across the hard wood, and sits down next to me. We sit for a while. At first, she mirrors me. I don’t show it, but I like it, and I don’t know why. I suspect she wants me to notice and acknowledge it, but I don’t. I don’t know how. She surrenders, wraps her arms around my arm and leans her head on my shoulder. I like that even more, but I still don’t show it. After a while, I surrender, and kiss the top of her head. I meet her embrace, and she and I adjust for each other as we just hold one another for a moment in our kingdom on the floor. Unsure what to do. Unsure how to sustain this moment. Not wanting it to end, but still too preoccupied with the end to enjoy it the way it ought to be enjoyed. The embrace

comes to an end, and we look at each other, aware of the importance of the moment, and are unable to do anything else except be there. 

“Let’s sleep on the floor tonight.” I say. 

“On the floor?” 

“Yeah. Why not?” 

She looks at me confused. I know she would if I pushed just a little bit harder. But I can see she doesn’t want to, and it fills me with doubt that my suggestion was quite as romantic as I initially thought it might be. The embarrassment propels me upward and towards our room and fills me with hope that she’ll forget I said something so strange and stupid. 

“Wait.” She says as she crosses her arms and reaches both out to me, asking me to help her up. She can get up herself just fine. But we like to be close to each other. I help her stand up and she is less than an inch from my face. Another moment I can’t appreciate, which I am grateful for. The more I appreciate, the less I am, and the more bitter I become. All that exists is me, helpless, and her Wizard of Oz eyes. “Put one on.” She gestures to the record player. She wants to dance. I put on Mr. Soul by Sam Cooke and play “Nothing Can Change This Love.” Her gaze is unbroken. I put my hands around her and hold her. Actually hold her. I don’t just touch her. But I am filled with her, physically and spiritually. She wraps her arms around my neck and rests her head on my breast. A calm washes over me and I am suddenly allowed to be in the moment and appreciate it while it’s happening. An atom must have been split, an angel must have been watching, or perhaps Venus rolled up exactly where it was supposed to, but it’s a perfect moment, and I know it’s happening as it’s happening. What a gift.

The song feels like a million years long and I am only sad it’s not a million and one. All of a sudden, some foreign compulsion uses my mouth to say something. “Promise me we’ll never get another couch.” 

“What?” She says, her confusion not as strong as her dedication to the moment. “Just promise me.” 

“What? Why? Why are you doing this now?” We are still dancing. 

“I just know how this goes. I don’t want another couch.” 

“How what goes? What are you saying?” We are no longer dancing. I can’t tell if the song is still on or not. All that exists is me, helpless, and her Wizard of Oz eyes staring at me in a kind of bewildered horror. 

She waits for an answer. I didn’t know what to say in the first place, and so I hope that the same stupidity that drove me to speak in the first place will have occasion to make me speak again, and sure enough, my stupid prayers are answered. 

“I know what’s going to happen. You’re going to get a career type job, and so will I, and we’re going to move out of this apartment. We won’t have these unframed posters anymore. We won’t pick our dinner from the stove pot. We won’t wear old hand me downs and undershirts. And we’ll get a nice couch and I’ll hate it because it won’t be this terrible old couch. And all this stuff, all these commitments, all these responsibilities will get in between us. I don’t want you to hate me some day. I don’t want you to regret me. I want you to tell me you love me right now in all the big, flowery ways that I love you. I want to be stuck in this moment forever with you and I want to sleep on the floor and I never want to go couch shopping with you.”

I can’t tell what about what I said was wrong, whether it was the words, the idea, the tone, or the context, but I knew it wasn’t right. And when I am done, there is another silence. I think I’m going to be yelled at. But finally, I start to pay attention and realize she’s been smiling at me for a long time. She puts her hands on my face and pulls me in close. 

“That’s not our problem right now. We’ve got plenty of other things to do before then. We will get a new couch some day, but that will be a different us. And when that time comes we won’t just need that new couch. We’ll want it. And we’ll be able to afford it. And you will enjoy it. And I will enjoy it. We’ll get to pick the color and everything. But for right now, this is our couch, and we can love to hate it or hate to love it as much as we like.” 

“Okay.” 

“And no matter how old we get, no matter what we wear to our wedding, no matter if we break up, no matter which one of us dies first, we will have right now. We have our whole lives to be tragic and tired. Let’s be lucky for right now.” “Okay.” 

She walks over to the record player and pulls the record off and puts it back in its sleeve. She gets on the floor and pulls me down with her. At first I oblige, but then I stop and don’t meet her on the floor. I pull her up, and she looks at me confused, thinking this is what I wanted the whole time. But I take her by the hand, lead her to our bed, and get in. She follows me without question. We stare at each other for a while until we fall asleep. 

I smile a quiet smile that I can’t help and I am enough.

At least, that’s what I imagine.