Sunrise

“Good morning, sundari. It’s six-thirty… you said you wanted to go in a little early, remember?”

She groaned, twisted, the sheets wrapping around her even tighter. She mumbled something incoherent. He chuckled.

Her hand sneaked out of the blanket. Fingers wriggled, beckoned.

He remained where he was. Even with her eyes tightly shut, she could see him. The way he leaned a little into his right. The slight twist upwards on a corner of his mouth. The lines near his eyes, sometimes a crow’s nest on the sides, sometimes dark sashes below. 

“Alright,” he said finally, the exasperation expressed evidently exaggerated. “Five more minutes. But only five.”

Her hand did a toss, a wave, before she pulled it back under the blanket, then under a cheek the ring would leave imprints on. Five minutes was both too short and too long. Her drowsiness refused to leave her, but wakefulness continued to play hide-and-seek. Five became four that became three, then two. And then one, and then she was counting down the seconds in her head, sensing his voice just a heartbeat before she heard it.

“Good morning, sundari. It’s six-thirty… you said you wanted to go in a little early, remember?”

She reached out with her hand, found him. 

He was there even though he wasn’t. Not since he had walked out that Friday morning, before she had woken up, leaving only the little bit of him that remained with her. A recording on her phone from a welcome sunrise a long time past, from a time when kindness wasn’t the only thing that bound them to each other, when they hadn’t known that kindness itself could become unkind if left too long unchallenged. 

Her thumb moved across before he could give her five minutes more.

And the alarm fell silent.