Tired

"I am too tired to move", she said, but his lips were already working their way in between her breasts. "Burrowing", she thought, "like those beavers in Chronicles of Narnia", and she wasn't quite sure why she thought of the reference. "I don't love you", she said. He shrugged. "What makes you think I love you?". The only answer was the night's silence. She could see the stars hanging, frozen, off of the blue bed of a night sky. "I wish I were like the stars", she thought, "nestled in sheets that hugged my body", but of course, who needed sheets when you had a man's body? "Men make the best blankets", she said later, when they were both in bed. He nodded sleepily, and she felt grateful for his weight beside her.

And this is the point where the high of insomnia turns into sheer tiredness, like ripped lace, or something, in this giant book of metaphors I seem to have forgotten, in this longing for sleep the way virgins long for sex, and all I am thinking of now is the first chapter of kings, where david gets a young virgin to warm his aging body.

What did she think when she shared his bed? What did he think when he felt her beside him, and no longer felt the familiar rising between the legs? I want to hug him then, to let him cry, to put his cheek to my breasts and whisper that it will be ok, that he is king, that he is a man, because to be a man is to be more than king, because what could be more beautiful than to conquer the land of a woman's body?

Right now my land remains unoccupied - waiting for a new tenant, I suppose, or maybe an owner, even - baal. A word that means husband, owner, man, and god. In ancient near eastern society, were they not the same?

Enough with the feminist critique. It rattles my ears, like pearls left out in a cardboard box, being shaken by a young boy who does not understand their worth, but a woman'sn worth is beyond pearls, even - or maybe beyond rubies.

Who can tell? I wear neither to bed - only a strip of lace, and a blanket of tiredness to cover this body, these legs that have walked today, these hands that have held hands and this mouth that has smiled, these fingers that have typed these words, only to slowly disentangle from the keyboard like an abandoning lover before morning.