These days

He stirs early, then comes back to me, sometimes with coffee on his breath. His hair is usually damp by then, and mussed. He wears black socks on his feet under pressed slacks. I like to watch him tie his tie, consider the results, and retie if needed. A few more sips of coffee and he’s looking at the clock on his phone, cussing at the minutes. Where did they go? I stand on the porch and kiss him on the mouth, then pad out to my car barefoot, wiping sleep out of my eyes, and back the car up so he can get out of the driveway. On productive days I go back inside, finish the coffee he left, and spend some time doing things: writing, photographing, freelancing, reading, gardening. Other days I melt into the couch and let the cats perch on top of me while I watch discs of Deadwood and Kids in the Hall. Some days I indulge myself with a nap around noon, but it never really refreshes. Just gives me odd dreams and makes me groggy and even less motivated to go to work.

On the weekend when we both get to sleep in, he stirs early and comes back to me, and we spend the morning hours laughing and out-sillying one another — inventing bad infomercials, bad products, bad bands, bad songs — our skin at times so close it fuses for a few minutes and then we sleep again, the sun teeming, mottled, through the shutters. Usually by then the cats have begun to suspect we’ve died in there and will never be coming back out, and they transmit their fear of an emptying food bowl via pained, persistent pleas with the door and its knob until I have my fill of insolence and slip out from under the sheets, hissing my anger at them as they greet me in the hallway and trot to their bowl to remind me of why I was put on this earth. It is then, in those minutes as he sleeps in my bed without me, that I am perhaps at my most domestic.

In the daylight I can see every cat hair tumbleweed and stray piece of lint on the floor. Coffee grounds on the counter top. Water spots in the bathroom. Dust on the sideboard. Mildew on the shower curtain. I turn the sprinklers on so the plants can get a drink and scrub the week’s detritus from the counter tops, placing each scattered glass I come across in the dishwasher. I boil water for coffee and hang coupons on the fridge as I wait for the grounds to steep. I gather damp towels and stray socks in the hamper and take inventory of what I’ve got left clean to wear. I empty the litter box and sweep up around it, fantasizing about the day I will be able to afford ceramic tile for the floor of the back room so stray bits of grit will no longer be able to hide under wonky cork tiles. I form neat piles of recyclables on the counter and haul them outside to the bin where they will sit until Thursday, when he will place them by the street without my even asking him to. I leaf through the week’s mail and shred most of it by hand before throwing it away. The rest goes into a pile, where I will decide what to do with it next week. (Spoiler alert: I will place it in a larger pile.)

It is me and my house in those hours — me setting right what the week’s living has wrought on the place that I have had a pretty intense love affair with now for nine months. It’s work and it takes time and is somewhat unpleasant but when I am in the mood to do it, it feels less like work than many other things I do.

When he shuffles into the living room to greet me and the day, I share what’s left of the coffee with him. He tells me it’s good and I can’t help but smile to myself. It wasn’t all that long ago that I wrote somewhere — a blog entry draft, an online dating profile, who knows — that sometimes I make a pot of coffee so good that I just want to have someone to share it with. I’ve got something much better than that right now.