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The morning finds her unready, and she is unkempt, unstilted, with her hair about her shoulders and her mind undone. Lying in a bower of sheets and pillows and things unblemished, hemmed in by the sun's far-reaching arms, she is unmoving and unfeeling. There are little flickers of unforgotten thoughts within her mind, unguarded and unsure, and she is unknowingly speaking them out loud and across lips unravaged, lips yet scoured. Water trickles through the eaves; unheard, it falls against the canopy until it drips against their shoulders in unseen tendrils.
His gaze is lazy, and his hand takes a long time in finding her face. He holds it and she is yet unsilent, until in exasperation he unfolds her with his hands and tucks her in between the tangy, unridden sheets. Like an accordion she relaxes into herself, with her knees tucked under; unprolific in everything but the quick darting of soft greedy eyes and the untethering of splayed legs, hands; thoughts.
It is time to go; it is time to rise and unearth the awnings of the sky once more, but she lies there, untelling his life story with the fluid slaps of her hands against the unspoiled air. Asking him questions, not waiting for answers, she shapes his history out of the unknowable into the breathing tenses of their unexpected everyday encounters. In the process, she unwinds bits of herself. Adjectives, nouns, verbs- surely and slowly they untangle themselves from behind her sharp little teeth and unmake him. He watches her vaguely, unaware of her limbs as a whole, yet wholly conscious of the slivers: the delicate throat, the underside of an arm, the thin bones that uncoil at slim ankles; pieces and parts never touched and unprepared for the unwinding paths of fingertips.
Familiarity can grow unto a person, if not remembered, she says in the face of the unmasking dawn; grows silent now.
-Unspoilt fruit they've brought to each other, on platters uncovered and bare. Bare like these unlit mornings, unwrapped only in the imprints left in the mattress, unseen and unfelt; almost unmet has been this life together.
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