Hearts on Fire

My eyes open laconically.
My ex-wife is running her fingers through my hair.
It takes a moment to register where I am as I don't recognize the view out of the window.
We have a precious few moments to relax before we each have to head back to our lives.
Lives we now lead separately.

We slip back into the jackets of our former selves and we each shudder as a chill of a memory of a shared past life lingers on an inhalation of breath for just a moment or two.

I wonder if it's the sex or the familiarity, or the nostalgia....but I know it's more and somehow less than that.
I still draw my fingers across the chords of my being remembering that day we ran off and got married, two crazy kids being crazy in the hope of finding solace from an unforgiving world within one another.

I know that I cannot be her superman but not for wanting.
I'm not sure what still remains that binds us, b/c we're both working to remove any of the legal and financial ties that bind.
Yet, something remains, perhaps the shared struggles, failures, and triumphs, or perhaps something more.
Two broken people, dangerously self-destructive yet high functioning.

She speaks and the spell breaks, we dress quickly without speaking, not out of awkwardness, but b/c we know one another so well we wordless get out of one another's way in a new version of an old routine we both know.

We kiss, say we love one another, and share one last lingering look.

I slip on a pair of sunglasses I stole the other day and head toward the horizon.