Work Text:
In Alaska, he would fall asleep in cold sheets,
drunk and restless with fragmented dreams he could never remember,
and wake up in cold sheets, extinguished cigarette still in his fingers
one too many times. Not even summer made a difference,
the bed still cool and damp with humidity, and plenty of nights
he would sleep in the truck under the stars and try not to tell himself stories
about the life his daughter never had and the other ways it might’ve gone
in Louisiana.
He’s not used to feeling good, and it chafes at first, like a new pair of boots
Too stiff until they’re broken in, rubbing him wrong even though they fit.
He wants to explain it, make sense of things the way he always has,
He starts keeping a list in his head, unwilling to write it down in case
He’s getting away with something.
Warm sheets every day of the year, the pillows soft and thick
And sometimes waking up with Marty next to him, the other man’s body heat
Like sunlight on his bare skin in the first few weeks of Alaskan spring.
The smell of coffee in the morning, filling the house he doesn’t have to leave.
Drinking it hot and black with his first cigarette
And finding no reason to hate being alive.
The way Marty quits finishing the bagels he picks up on the way to work,
Saving the last mouthful for Rust.
Marty’s goofy laugh as they watch TV,
Rust sitting on the floor in front of him with his back against the sofa,
And the way Marty runs his fingers through Rust’s hair, sometimes
Scraping his nails against the scalp.
Their elbows touching on the bar top when they go drinking
And Marty’s eyes following women in high heels and plunging necklines
But he always drives Rust home.
Their clothes tumbling out of the dryer together
and those mornings when Marty irons Rust’s shirt and pants
and leaves them hanging on the back of the bathroom door.
Marty bitching at him every six months about giving up the Camels, “because
Maybe I don’t want your crazy ass dying of lung cancer twenty years before I croak.”
The way he and Audrey get to seeing each other without Marty, an extra friendship
He never would’ve anticipated—how she bums his cigarettes and teaches him
to paint in her studio, enlists his help with designing her first big tattoo—
Then squeezes his hand for two hours in the ink parlor,
Borrows his books and loans him hers
(the words of so many women washing the salt out of old wounds),
talks to him
like she’ll never talk to her parents.
Her golden hair reminds him of Marty.
The first time she hugs him, she’s a little bit drunk,
And Rust holds onto her as long as she lets him.
She is not Sophia but he doesn’t need her to be.
Now, he dreams of horses
black and brown, white and red
stampeding across Texas,
transforming into dust and light
and dandelion seeds, flying
into the stars like so many blown kisses
from his daughter.
The rabbits in the backyard remind him of her,
Of the bunny print blanket in her crib that he had forgotten about.
He sees her everywhere, the way he used to when it hurt,
But now he smiles, ache-less, because she never quit loving him.
He’s got a feeling she’s behind this whole new life,
Done reeled him into her favorite game of peek-a-boo,
And he glimpses her in the grocery store as Marty pushes the cart,
In the lights at the county fair where Audrey wins him a stuffed Eeyore
Shooting down targets in her cowboy boots,
In the magnolias blooming come spring and
his own laugh, his own hands drawing chickadees.
All right. He can live with that.
Loading the Christmas tree into his truck bed every December,
The old women flirting with him after he tells em
Their husbands are cheats,
Marty asking for his cowboy chili and cornbread once every two weeks,
The scar raised down his belly and the way it almost stings with the weather,
Cigarettes and gasoline costing too much for his good sense
But not enough to make him change,
Mowing their front lawn and drinking Marty’s sweet tea in the summer,
Marty hugging him for no reason—his friend
Going soft with age.
He can live with all that.
For a long, long time.