One Sunday Afternoon

What silliness.

Are you ill? Perhaps you’ve caught a cold, or one of those roving illnesses that sweep through the city from time to time.

Look at you. You worry me.

Are you infatuated with the feel of the fabric on your skin? You really are. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not the one cuddling up to a blanket like a toddler. I’m not the one stroking the pile like a long-missed lover.

Besides, your lover is sitting right here.

Hey, where are you going? You’re taking the blanket with you? Really? How adult of you! So very damned adult! CHILD!

And she slams the door.

I wish I could talk to her, like I used to. I wish we could talk with each other, like we used to do. We talk at each other now. The words flying back and forth but no communication is made.

Just sound.

I can hear her crying despite being a room, a hall, and a closed door away. She said I’ve changed. I stopped caring. I haven’t! It’s just…

We have to be adult now, the time for childish silliness is gone. There are bills to be paid, and jobs to work at, and grass that needs mowing. We can’t take the time to coo and giggle about something we touch every day. The blanket is always going to be there, after all. It will always be there to touch if we need to, right?

Just like I’m here if she wants to touch me. Right here. Sitting. Where I always do. But she never reaches for me. She reaches for everything else. The way she idly traces the design on the coffee cup makes me shiver. She doesn’t touch me like that. Not anymore.

Why won’t she grow up? What could possibly be there in the feel of things? She clings to the most delicate of sensations and refuses to talk to me. When she does open her mouth, she speaks of the most adolescent of topics. The scent of roses. The taste of melting ice. Ice is water, it doesn’t have a taste! And how she compares the taste of my skin with melting butter! I can not comprehend these teenage dreams.

We’re grown up now. We’re both adults. We’ve had our children and watched them leave. No more silliness, right?

I’m old, now. I have bills to pay, a job to do, and grass that needs to be cut. Grass that always need to be cut. The stuff grows faster than my bills.

There was once a time, when I would let the grass grow tall on purpose. Her and I, we would lay down in it, and relish the touch of it on us, and the touch of each other, on each other. But we’re old now.

Oh, hello. I didn’t hear you. How long have you been standing there?

A dare? Are you serious? Have you seen how tall the grass is? We’ll get muddy and track dirt into the house and…

No, I haven’t forgotten. But we were younger then. No amount of overgrown greenery is going to make us young again.

It’s come to that, then. You’re going to bet our marriage on adolescent play? I guess I can cut the grass tomorrow. Tell me, what’s the dare?

What would the neighbors think! What would they say if they saw us rolling around in the grass naked? Yes, it’s our back yard, but…

No, I can’t. I’m sorry. I think I see it now, the problem between us. I’m old. You’re still young. I can’t feel anymore. You still feel everything. I aged, and you…

You’re still the maiden I married, so many years ago.

Hey! I need those glasses! You know I’m blind without them! Where are we going? The kitchen? I can’t see!

OH! That’s cold! What… Oh… oh… mm*

I forgot what ice tasted like. And you’re right. Your skin does taste like how butter melts.

I will try, but you will have to help me remember. Remember what it was like before I aged. Remember how to feel the world again. Remember how to hear the scent of roses in your words. Remember how to say “I love you.”, not in the sounds and the syllables, but in the attention I gave you. In the hours after the bills were paid. In the hours before the job day started. In the embrace of the tall green grass.

This prose inspired by, and written for, Sunday Scribblings #284: Sensation.