I wake up sticky. My eyes hurt open. The room is still grey with dawn. My brain a cloud of half-sleep with wisps of half-awareness.
He snores beside me, whiskey-raucous, deep and drowning. Why do my eyes hurt? My mouth feels not my own. It is a giant’s. Too large and unwieldy for my face. I shift and moan, my hair is matted to the pillow, sticky. It all comes back, the night, even as the morning brightens through the window slowly coloring the walls.
He rolls and rumbles toward me, his arm an anchor thrown across my hip.
Sorry, he whispers wet and slurry. I get so goddamn jealous. And he pulls me to him, a sweat-slippery chest. The morning clears my head and I remember. And understand the ashen streak reddening across my pillow is my blood.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
(The phrase “I wake up sticky” was inspired by the phrase “I wake up sticky-mouthed” by Peter Meehan and David Chang in their article in the Fall/Winter 2011 issue of The Lucky Peach.)
and
(From lyrics Woke Up Sticky, copyright Peter Perrett http://www.justsomelyrics.com/2208644/Peter-Perrett-Woke-Up-Sticky-Lyrics)
