in the morning, i forget who i am.
the night bulges with dreams so vivid and absolute that waking brings a moment of inchoate awareness, a moment in which i am neither my dreaming nor my waking self. a moment that slips by, unnoticed or immediately disregarded and thrown to the winds of necessity. classes, sunlight, worry.

sleep is dynamic rather than static. somewhere between a few and a dozen times a night, i'm pulled out of sleep to move, shift, roll over. by morning, the comforter is shoved against the wall or flung halfway across the room, pillows are found under the bed or at my feet, and it takes that disoriented moment to find myself.

today slid open with the press of solidity against me. early morning light slanting through newly-cleaned windows and casting ivyshadows on our legs. my first awareness of the day is skin.
my first expression of the day is smile.

stretching calves and toes, i find the impossible softness of his feet, and, murmuring wordless apologies for waking so early, curl myself back against him.
in the haze of incoherent morningness, happiness filters through me, soft and pink and golden, until all my words and all my world dissolve into the depth of the mattress, the scent of skin, the sound of breath.

he sighs, sleepdrenched, and pulls me closer.