Slow Touch

A woman lies open eyed in the dim morning. 
He is finally asleep after another 4 AM waking. 
She mostly lets him drift, sometimes 
interrupts his snore to wrap an arm around, 
across him, until decades of ache drive her 
back into solitary postures. Soon, she reaches 
again, hand seeking the buried beat inside 
his silken chest, places a kiss, another, 
on his warm shoulder. He sighs the sigh 
that comes from slow touch, manages a turn 
to lay his heavy arm across her waist, his hand 
somewhere in the void beyond her. She waits 
for that hand. Only when bored restlessness
and the clock finally win, when she sits up, pauses, 
feet on the chill floor, does he reach to caress 
the small of her back or hip poised to stand. 
A small investment. They both know she must go.
Perhaps it is similar to the way she calls her mother 
when she is driving toward mountains, knowing 
she will lose signal soon and the conversation 
has a sure expiration, will not wander on for hours, 
her mother’s retelling tales of loss and longing, 
ever etching grooves—waiting to be played, waiting 
for the needle to drop—on her daughter’s body.