The Way Her Hair Falls

I am awake before she is. The sunlight lays warm on our bedsheets, white dunes of linen shifting gentle over her side as I turn. I see the curve of her shoulder—light tracing down her arm, haloing her skin—before it disappears under fabric. Her side rises with the soft rush of sleeping breath. Like gust between wheat grass. I watch it stir little motes of dust, floating on air. They limn her repose in weightless drift. The way her hair falls: thousands of strands caressing, grazing her shoulderblade, shades kissing her neck, caught in daylight, aura the layered smell of oil and coconut. It drapes down to brush the bed, just so.

 She wakes. She is me.