Side-Lying Face-Sitting
Oral in repose, in the shape of our sectional, instead of side-by-side scrolling
I imagined us lying together in the sun, mostly nude, but not entirely (I liked some distance between us). I carried that dream while pushing our baby on a swing and critiquing marker artwork. But by evening, I lost it.
“Why the sad face?” my husband said, looking up at me from the couch.
“I wanted you all day,” I whined.
My headband dangled off the back of my head. I didn’t have the energy to fix it. After the kids fell asleep, I wasn’t ready to myself, but could only imagine scrolling and losing myself in nothingness.
“Oh, come here,” he said.
“But I’m,” I said. “I feel defeated. I can’t do anything more.”
“Oh baby,” he said. He rose off the couch, stepped over a rainbow of magnetic building tiles, grabbed my hands, and led me back to my butt.
Our couch is three blocks of padded leather. We shape them like an L - two blocks against the wall and one in front. I sat on the block that jutted out. He sat on the block kitty-corner.
“Lay down,” he said.
I collapsed where I was. My head, at the foot of the couch, and my knees and feet pointed toward the wall.
He turned to face my legs. I closed my eyes; A level of presence I could muster - more than facing a screen, less than facing someone.
He squeezed my feet. They softened. His hands rubbed up my legs. He bent in close. I felt his breath. He kissed my thighs. In that place, he rested his head. I sighed, opened my eyes, and laid a hand on his head. Something twitched in me.
He was parallel to the wall, feet dangling off the far armrests - our bodies shaped like the couch.
I admired his body. Lying on his side, my muscular husband had a softness to him.
I stretched my legs up the backrest, heels against the brick wall. My husband turned toward my thighs and breathed into my skin. I liked the scratch of his stubble.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked.
“Back,” I said.
He kissed me on my upper thigh.
“Back?”
“Back to myself.”
He kissed me closer to my center. Pecking toward my underpants.
