“She always found making her bed difficult, because the process reminded her of sleep; the heaviness that imbued her arms as she swung the sheets overhead—half-mast—to reposition them, how all the fabrics’ movement seemed to slow down and hesitate, before settling back in place. This morning it took a while. She’d already been up for an hour, the sheets and pillows twirled into a nest, a prison. Her head propped up on the outermost ring, she looked at the ceiling, before dipping over and taking a sip of coffee from the cup off the edge of her bed, her torso like a comma, head-heavy. Like some kind of reservoir birdbath. Sip, sip.

She was busy trying not to be sad about the whole thing. Whenever she thought about it, her stupid little eyes would shrink up, like coils springing back, ready to go forth and—whatever. She felt like such a sap. She’d spent one night with her. One. But this did not factor in the build-up. Dating, or effectively going on a singular date with her, had been like training for a half-marathon, transforming all that useless stasis-fat of just, like, staring at her, into slowly moving towards her, diverting the strength normally used to ocularly pine for her into actually moving her body closer to her body, interacting her, gulping back spit-laced wads of wild fear, hiccupping, and when she finally got her number, when she finally asked and received that “yes,” deep and heady, it resonated in her gut, it bloomed her hips, open, wide, welcoming, it made her feel fuller, made her body feel more like a body, thicker, with more dimension, corpulent and sensual, spreading out over everything she.

Spreading out is then what she set out to do, with her desire, to meter it out. She had to build stamina, to breed patience, in her sprinting heart. She had to melt down this bronze spear that beamed loud through her body, from the crest of her hair down to her hungry.“