The beautiful boy is sleeping next to me. It is 1pm and he is peaceful, soothed into a mid-afternoon nap by the monotonous murmur of his own recorded voice, still humming softly from the ancient laptop propped aside our feet. His head rests slightly against my thigh; we are surrounded by the brightly patterned ephemera of my pillows, blankets, and sheets. The contents of my nest, riotous when clamored together in the tiny psychedelic womb of the van, take on a homey bohemian sensibility against the white-on-pineboard backdrop of my house. Beiges, greys, cool robin's egg blue, the starched white Scandinavian zeal for comfortably rumpled order. This is the thing that's missed - it's not white-for-white's-sake, the instagram aesthetic of sterility and self-restraint; it is furniture intended as canvas, the crispness offered as a counterpoint to unrestrained and daily expression.
He smells good, the boy. My fingers wind their careless way through his hair, examining the textures at the back of his neck, his shoulders. He smells of tobacco and neutral shampoo, the slightest tang of sweat from a morning workout still lingering on his skin. My attention is effortless, gently directed at the books of essays propped open on my lap while my senses absorb all the small pleasures of his presence. The softness of the blanket thrown between us, the slow rhythm of his breath as his shoulders ebb and rise against my side. The ineffable, indescribable magic of touch, of that person so familiar and beloved that the constancy of their weight upon your skin forms the heartbeat of existence.
It has not yet been twenty-four hours that we've been once again together, not yet even a full day past the terror of the border, the heart-pounding hand-shaking adrenaline of desperate documents forwarded from the driver's seat of a parked car. Just a single night's sleep beyond longing, hopeful glances at a closed airport terminal door, all that separates us. And yet, like two compounds in suspension, we have catalyzed this place in a few short hours. With our loving glances and mischievous jokes, with our two pillows on the bed and twin dents in the couch cushions, with soft fingers through the hair and an afternoon nap, we have turned this house into a home.
Stay safe
-Magpie