The night was thick and wet. I could smell the lake, the citronella candle that had burned out hours ago, and something else—her shampoo. Coconut and something green. I watched the dim light from a distant dock play across her face. In sleep, the sharpness in her eyes was gone. The mocking tilt of her mouth had softened. She looked younger. She looked like a stranger.
But every summer since, when the magnolias drop their petals and the air grows thick and heavy, I think about that porch. That silence. That impossible, sleeping closeness. And I wonder if she remembers whispering those words, or if the dream swallowed them whole.
A loon called across the water. Long and low and sad. Lena’s fingers twitched, then curled slightly, as if she were holding onto something in a dream. -ENG- Sleeping Cousin -RJ353254-
You are there.
I froze.
I never told her.
Not because she was beautiful, though she was—the sharp line of her jaw, the dark fan of her lashes, the slow rise and fall of her chest. But because she was there . Unaware. Unguarded. Sleeping people exist in a different dimension, one where they cannot see you looking, cannot catch you staring. They are utterly vulnerable, and that vulnerability is a kind of power you steal without permission. The night was thick and wet
And then, without opening her eyes, she whispered—so softly I almost thought I imagined it— "Tu es là."
Either way, I have never sat so still in my life. And I have never felt so entirely awake. I watched the dim light from a distant
I stopped breathing.