Bibulous.

Clink, clink, clink.

“How’s that?”

“Mmm… a little more ice, please.”

And I oblige, of course, because when he’s sitting in bed, naked beneath the sheets, and leaning a bit off kilter against the headboard as he does, free will gets excised from my vocabulary.

“That’s perfect.”

Clink, clink, clink.

I tap my silverware against the table in a vain attempt to regain his attention, but he’s already wandered off to the bar to pound tequila shots with a stunningly beautiful bartender. There is no way I can compete, I know this. Defeated, I lower my eyes to the banquette and withdraw into myself.

Taciturn, again.

Clink, clink, clink

The rain is bouncing off of the window pane, pooling on the ledge overlooking the pit below. I survey the wreckage around me with more than a touch of melancholia, then retreat back to the safety of his arms.

Clink, clink, clink.

He stands one-legged on a make-shift perch, the metal pole bouncing off of the card table behind him to the rhythm of his twitching muscles. Slowly he raises his other leg, until now a useless limb dangling in air, and pulls it up, over his head, wraps it around his shoulders.

Like today, it is perfect kite-flying weather – blindingly sunny, windy, and just a little cool. My chin rests on a shoulder as I watch the spectacle, then turns inward to nuzzle the nape of a neck. I don’t need to watch these physical feats, because at this moment I know that the acrobatics of the human heart are grave indeed, but unlike the contortionist before me they are not bound by the laws of gravity.