-eng- Sleeping Cousin: -rj353254-

Instead, I sat down on the floor. Cross-legged. Two feet from the chaise.

Not waking—just a small, mammalian turn. Her hand slipped from her stomach and fell over the edge of the chaise. Her fingers brushed my knee.

I did not move. I did not breathe. I simply sat there, her fingertips resting against the bone of my knee, and felt the terrible, exquisite weight of being this close to something I could never have.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Because the moment I spoke, the spell would break. She would wake, and the knowing would begin, and the summer would become something I had to apologize for. -ENG- Sleeping Cousin -RJ353254-

I stopped breathing.

Her fingers were warm. Light as a fallen petal. She didn’t pull away. She didn’t open her eyes. In that half-dream state, perhaps she thought the chaise was wider, or that the warmth beside her was just the memory of a body.

Minutes passed. Or an hour. Time had turned syrupy. A moth bumbled against the screen, frantic and soft. I watched her breathe. In. Out. In. Out. The rhythm began to sync with my own heart. Instead, I sat down on the floor

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.

Either way, I have never sat so still in my life. And I have never felt so entirely awake.

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. Not waking—just a small, mammalian turn

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.

Then she shifted.