pleasure state

There’s a 360-degree view of trees and sea, but pete stares at me while I read jonathan franzen on the couch. Then I catch myself in the kitchen watching him read the paper in the afternoon light – I half expect him to offer a running commentary on the world as he soaks up the news, but he doesn’t.

Each time I leave the room, a past love flashes into my mind with little reminders of the first moments of that first falling. Like writing my 1999 Christmas to-do list on M's chest in our first week together, then staying in bed for days, blurred, indelible. Or waking in the night to study his face while he slept.

For once, these rememberies aren’t crowding out new love. Like moving house dislodges thoughts of all the shifting seasons that have come before, I am connecting gently with the last time I really felt this.

We’re putting on boots to walk through the forest. Razorbacks call out like mutant villains from either side of the path and I’m waiting for them to charge out of the bush and eat our internal organs, but pete says they’re only marking their territory and I choose to believe him.

I watch our shadows touch on the great ocean road and remember M and me on the beach after swimming in phosphorescence, the moment I said, ‘I reckon we’ve got legs’. 

This is the state of falling in love.