We sleep together as if we were born that way. Wrapped around one another in a gently knotted pattern of arms, legs, torsos, backs�touching always. She wakes and turns to me to kiss whatever body part is closest to her lips and sinks back to dreams. I wake and caress her skin with the palm of my hand and smile into sleep. This is how we sleep�encompassed and complete.

Morning wakes us gently. She smiles with her eyes still closed, pulling herself closer into the fit of me, rebelling against rising. Finally, she blinks awake and smiles wider. Hi, she says. Hi, I say.

But with the clamoring of the alarm clock, memory awakes, and both of us close our eyes at once, not to sleep or dream or sigh into an embrace but to push away the coming hour.

She tells me to stand up first, to encourage her. I laugh and we kiss again as I pull myself up from bed to search for the clothes I took off the night before. I am sad that we won�t be showering this morning. That I won�t be making tea while she slices fruit. That we won�t walk, hand-in-hand, to begin a day easier for the knowing that we shall finish it together.

She rises soon after me, and in the time it takes me to brush my teeth, she�s nearly dressed�Capri-cut jeans, an olive-green tank top that she covers with a sweatshirt, dressing for the different springs of a Boston morning and a San Antonio afternoon.

We both cover our heads, like devout women going to pray�my newsie cap, backwards, her purple bandanna with the knot slightly off-centered, and devoutly, we turn to each other before leaving to offer gifts of parting.

She hands me, proud of herself, the newest edition of Emily Dickinson�s poetry. The inscription reads like her hands across my stomach~

you bring my skin to life. and my soul. you stretch your poetry across my hands. across our lips. your fingertips are prayer. our love, our god.

In the interlude of caressing her name beneath her words and looking up to meet her searching eyes, my eyes smart, overwhelmed with what they�ve seen, with joy and the melancholia of geographical distances. But her eyes are shy and uncertain. It�s a beautiful gift, I tell her. She kisses me and holds out her hand, palm up in which she holds a tube of lip balm. It�s what I was wearing on our first date, she tells me, so you can taste me while I�m not here. Vanilla.

In my own nervousness, I hand her my gift. Forty-four cards, one each for the days she�ll be gone. You can read them all at once, if you�d like, I tell her. You know I won�t. And as an after thought, I give her my lip balm. Peppermint.

We both laugh at ourselves�our ridiculousness.

And then we leave, before six thirty in the morning, for Logan International. She slept with her head on my shoulder for nearly the entire train ride, waking to kiss me, to smile, to ask, disoriented, how many more stops.

At the airport, we had coffee and donuts, trying to act normal. Trying to remind ourselves, and each other, that even good-byes are memorable moments�that they can be as beautiful as beginnings. Knowing that letters are as sweet as kisses when penned with the same softness.

Directly before the security point, we said our final fair-wells: lingering kisses and full-bodied hugs. Okay, just one more, she said softly. Just one more, I insisted. And we both turned, walking in different directions.

San Antonio. Boston. Massachusetts. Texas.

Forty-four days.

To anticipate.

I am alive�I guess--
The Branches on my Hand�
Are full of Morning Glory--
And at my fingers end--�