To Our Divide, and the Next One,

Rain pounds heavy against your window. You pick your head up from the pillow. There’s a stranger across the
room and they sit on the pile of wrinkled clothes on that chair at the darkest corner as the light shines
through slits in the blinds with a tinge of red and stretches across your legs as the stranger gets up and you press your back against the headboard and you realize there’s nowhere else you can crawl as they pass across the red line, but they don’t stay there long enough for you to make out any features before you throw yourself under the covers while the only thing you can hear is the footsteps coming closer and closer and closer as you pull the blanket back down to your cheek as they sit down on the edge of your bed and you let your guard down for only a second and they touch your cheek. The rain has never sounded so clear before. They lay down next to you. You retreat back, back below the blanket. The springs in your mattress creak and moan. The stranger stirs in the bed next to you. You begin to sweat, but they wrap their arm around you. As you pull the blanket back down to your chest, they kiss your red, sweaty cheek. The light through the blinds grows more red as it stretches across the two pairs of legs, intertwined. And you feel okay, just maybe, for the first time in a while.