Always

The room had all the charms of a charity shop, a musty charity shop where donations lay unsorted and neglected. Boxes and baskets lay at odd angles over-flowing with sweaters, socks and underwear. A filled clothes rack stood blocking out what light could have made it through the grime-speckled window. The outline of a bed could be seen beneath piles of books and more boxes, more clothes. A few ragged rugs clung to the floor. A pall of dust lay overall and hovered in the air as if seeking space to touch down. A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling emitting a cold hazy light through a thick film of dust.

She stood on the threshold barely breathing, trying to reconcile the two pictures in her head, the room now and as it was. She sniffed, smelling both the tired air and the flower-fragranced breeze from an open window. She slipped off her shoes and stepped forward feeling, not bare boards but soft carpet. Her toe brushed against something and she looked down, puzzled to see but not quite seeing a box marked 'odds and ends'. Without conscious thought she cleared a space on the bed and lay down.

The lightest of zephyrs played on her closed eyelids, to be replaced by another touch, gentle, warm, tracing the contours of her face and raising the corners of her mouth.

"I knew you'd come back" she said, "I told them it was silly to pack your things". She turned on her side as she heard the bed creak faintly beneath added weight. Feeling the warmth of his body, his teasing breath on her ear, his hand cupping her breast, she sighed. "I knew you'd be back". The arms about her held her closer still. She didn't need to open her eyes. Every sense was filled with him. What use was there to look at what was false when she lay in reality's safe keeping.

Then there was a sound beyond his quiet breathing. A voice was calling her name. There were footsteps on the stairs and the approaching voice louder, anxious.

"I knew it was too soon, too soon to let you out".

Then more gently "Come love, let's take you home".

The figure on the bed sighed again and she smiled. All was well. She would go, arise from the clean/grimy bed, retrieve her shoes from the soft/hard floor and breathe that sweet-scented/dusty air for the last time. She no longer needed to be in this place, not now that she knew that he would always be with her. All was well.