BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

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FRIDAY
13.06.1997
DORIAN

               My eyelashes are sealed with sleep. When I peel them apart, I find myself in a room bathed in sunlight that sieves through the fleece of pollen outside the window. The bindweed in the wallpaper blooms to greet the morning. My soul is at peace between my bones.

Isaiah's breath fans my shoulder. With me lying on my back, he clings to my right arm and leg with his like a sloth climbing a branch. Curled up, he looks incredibly small. The sun scattered across his face, every muscle at rest, he looks healthy. And so beautiful.

The alarm on my watch beeps. I turn it off as soon as I can with just one hand but I'm not fast enough.

Isaiah groans. Even when his face screws up, it remains just as handsome. 'What have you put an alarm on for? We ain't got nuttin to do today.'

'On the contrary,' I say brightly. 'It's Shabbat.'

He opens one eye to inspect me before he shuts it again. 'I thought the whole point of Sabbath was rest.'

'Exactly. Which is why we have to clean and cook everything before it starts. And we have to go to the shop, I'm assuming.' The kitchen, too, is empty.

Isaiah merely groans again and presses his face to my bicep to avoid the light. (I want to protect you even from the sun. I will pray for it to stop burning if it bothers you.)

As reluctant as I am, I peel my arm from his hold and tuck my pillow in its place. It's warm and must smell like me and Isaiah buries his face into it, rolling onto his stomach to hug it more intensely.

When I return from the bathroom, he's asleep again. I can't help but slip back into bed and into his body heat.

The summer is warm enough that even Isaiah sleeps only in a ribbed tank top and thin cotton trousers, orange and blue. The ball of his right shoulder rises like a hill from the cloud of the duvet. I press a kiss to it. He smells like himself again, of the castor oil he let me massage into his hair yesterday and his mother's moringa perfume.

I stroke his temple and soon his eyes part a sliver.

'Sorry—'

'No,' I interrupt. 'I like it when you sleep. You don't sleep enough.'

He makes a noise that might be yeah. Angular phonemes glue to the sleep on his tongue and his speech muddles. 'Been sleeping better lately. Ganja helps with the pain so I don't wake up so much.'

'That's good.' Smiling, I continue to caress his face. 'How are you feeling now?'

Isaiah turns onto his back, watching me through his eyelashes, the sun still too bright for him. Sleep lingers around him like dew over Halsett's orchards at dawn. The pillow has debossed creases on his cheek.

A slow grin grows on his lips until his tooth gap is unobstructed. 'I'm really happy.' He hugs my pillow tighter, shifting it closer to his face to cover his mouth and his eyes open properly. The dew is gone. 'I'm scared though... I can't believe it's real, that you're really here. Maybe I'm hallucinating the whole thing.'

A window is cracked open and the sphere of warmth in my chest quivers in the draft. My eyes twitch with the urge to look away.

'It's real.' My hand sweeps his jaw, nudging the pillow out of the way in the process, and I angle his face toward mine. I kiss his forehead, meaning: I promise, I promise, I promise. 'This is real.'

Isaiah takes hold of my wrist and though he runs his hand up and down my forearm in reassurance, his eyes glisten.

'What's wrong?