Mornings were an enemy to him. If he woke up naturally at 8am or 10am, there wasn’t a problem, but that was rarely an option. He loved sleeping beside her, having her with him in his bed, but in the mornings he hated being woken up by her. She was the best possible person to wake him up as she climbed over him and rustled out of the bed, but he resented being woken.

She would make her way into the shower. He would listen to the water thundering through the pipes to rush out of the shower head and all over her beautiful body. He would lie in bed lost in his imagination, waiting for her to return to the bedroom. He would watch her dry her perfect skin and get dressed. Each day would be the same, but he would never tire of her nakedness, it would always break him out of his sleepiness.

It was when she left, after kissing him of course, that he started becoming miserable. He was locked in a place between sleeping and rising. He didn’t want to get out of bed yet because he knew she had taken up all the hot water. He couldn’t bear to be up in the cold air of the morning without quickly diving under the steaming stream of a shower. But he couldn’t fall back asleep. So, here he was in prison, resenting her for leaving him there.

After his shower, he would sometimes hold on to his resentment. It would throw him into an angry mood. He would scribble furiously, using his petty fit to create with. His emotions would boil over on to the page and he would construct angry scenes of passion and, at times, hate. He’s be exhausted by the time she got home and happy to see her again. She would kiss him softly and the memory of the morning would crumble and blow away.

Other times, he would find himself sitting alone after his shower, his hair cooling in the draft of the house, and he’d miss her. He’d be sad he hadn’t gotten out of bed with her, showered with her, had some breakfast with her. He wished she hadn’t had to go to work. He would have preferred spending the day in bed with her. He went to his paper and he scrawled elaborate scenes of loss and desire. He wrote all his sadness into his plays, the sadness of being apart. When she came home he would run to her and embrace her, he would kiss her and grab her bum. She would smile and he would stay close to her for the rest of the night.

There were also days when he was very pleased with her absence. His creativity would flourish in the solitude and he would be so happy to be writing in the silence of isolation. After she left, as he waited for the hot water to replenish, he would smile imagining how productive he could be without her there distracting him with all her amazing attributes. He would write his version of poetry. He would write hilarious and exciting scenes for his plays. And when she returned home after her long day, he would be excited to tell her about what he had come up with while she was gone and it was then that he’d realize how much he missed her. The evening would fly by as they laughed and shared.

It was when he didn’t change that he began to worry. She would leave and he’d feel no different, he wasn’t angry, sad or happy. She would return and he would barely notice. She would kiss him and his cloud of personal conflict wouldn’t dissipate. He was never particularly happy she left, but he was finding it more and more difficult to be happy about his creative freedom because it was more and more difficult to make use of it. He would climb out of bed in the mornings, her nakedness fresh in his mind, and he would be numb in the cold of the empty house not aware of the temperature, not aware how apart they were.