My toddler is asleep, and I’m laying in the bathtub listening to acoustic music
My baby kicks inside of my stomach. Any day now we’ll meet him or her. My partner is downstairs cleaning up after dinner.
We used to take a lot of baths together, him and I. When we first started dating he would come over and we would melt into each other.
My apartment had a large bathtub that we could both fit in. I would play evening acoustic on Spotify, candles lit, lights off. I would practice my joint rolling skills and we would laugh and tell each other about the day, our clothes falling off. We would make it into the bathtub and I would give Mary Jane a kiss before passing her to him. Skin to skin, sometimes wordless listening to the music say everything we could or would have said.
We wanted out of the rat race. We still do. We had dreams we would paint onto a canvas in front of each other with our words. Travel, yoga, running, singing on a stage, our bodies lit on fire with the life we breathed out of our pores in those younger days. Sometimes we would walk down the viaduct after, holding hands, bundled up in the cold night air. We would sit wordlessly on the edge of the city, lights dancing in front of us in slow motion. Sometimes continuing to play music while we slow danced together, the city winking in the background, our breath visible in the crisp air.
I can feel the water moving as I am kicked from the inside. And it will begin again, the next chapter soon enough. And I feel something so intense, so intangible but real that it hurts for a second.
The most painful realization being that in the story of us we’ve already closed chapters. When we were a different us and the world and possibilities were open. The biggest box of crayola crayons possible, all of the colors available then. And we took a hold of each others hands and we drew on the same canvas together in permanent marker in bold even strokes. Never realizing that with every step forward we were shedding. Skin that would grow back but new, formed with thoughts different than before. Formed with feelings different than before.
