Morning Girl

“Hey, did you see where – never mind, found it.”  He continued the bustle of the morning, each morning was the same.  Wake up just a bit later than he should and live in shame of her sad look down at him.  She was always awake in the mornings and reminded him too often that he should be up and doing more.

“You sleep through the morning you miss half the day.”  She said that the very first time they had ever spent the night together.

“Come on, the day is upon us.”  He wiped sleep from his eyes and jumped from the bed, eager to follow this glorious soul into the morning.  She was vibrant and alive, and she drew him in like the proverbial moth to the flame.  Sometimes people click together, and though he may not have put it to words, looking back, even now in the beginnings of middle age he could not help but to feel the same burst of love he felt even on that first morning.

Yet that made the mornings no easier with time and the bed just is so much warmer and the dreams, well sometimes they made the sad look worth it.  But still he shook his head and smirked each morning.

“I hate leaving you these next couple days.”  Work was work, and when work said to go to Chicago, then it was off to Chicago.  He yelled back into the bedroom.  “Hey, I have your sister coming by to check on the cat.”  She did not answer.  “I know, it drives you crazy having her around, but I hate to say the cat might starve if you were left in charge.”  He laughed at her continued stubborn silence.

Though she never said it, she hated when he left.  The first time was two weeks after the honeymoon.  “You will miss your flight,”she warned.  Then she snuggled in close to him and whispered, “I can give you all kinds of reasons to miss that flight.”  Even now, a decade later he remembered that first trip with a melancholy guilt.  Yet her joy in seeing him when he came home was something magical, and that almost made the trip worth it.  The passing years never made the occasional conference any easier.

“I will be back before you know it.”  He walked back into the bedroom and stared at her.  “I will miss you.  I think I want to stuff you into my suitcase.”  She only came with him once to a conference and she admitted the event was so incredibly boring that even the hotel and the chance to be out in some new town was not quite worth it.  Besides, money is money and she had her own career to think about.

“You say that every time,” she once scolded him, and he laughed despite her annoyance.

“And I am right every time too.”  And he was.  But that was years ago, and the idea of hiding her away in the suitcase had appeal.

But she never said a word, so he shrugged and went about the last few things that need doing.

“You will be late.”  She used to have to warn him each morning, though in the past few years the warnings stopped, his sense of shame pulling him out of bed a few minutes earlier than his body wanted.  He checked his watch this time and held it up like a shield.  “I will be there in plenty of time this time.”  He did a last walk around of the house and pulled the door shut behind him.  The key went into the mailbox, to be picked up by her sister later that afternoon he hoped.

As he got in the car he looked sadly back at the door for one moment, then reluctantly drove on.

And back inside, a cat explored the empty house, not even noticing the picture on the desk by the bed, a beautiful memory of a love that died years before, as love sometimes does.

Rob is a transplanted Canadian, dropped down into the heart of Kansas and still wondering how that all happened.  

Put the pen to paper and start writing. He trusts the Muse to take him places but usually does not sit down long enough to listen very well. But he sees stories everywhere, because we are all amazing stories that need to be told.