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CONSTANT STATE OF LOVE<br />
<strong>Diverse</strong> <strong>Voices</strong> <strong>Quarterly</strong>, Vol. 1, <strong>Issue</strong> 1 & 2<br />
by<br />
Lynn Ly<br />
I woke up feeling awfully bloated, but I knew I couldn’t do anything about it. For a<br />
while, I pondered about whether I should go get the newspaper before she wakes up<br />
but decided against it, favoring the sound of her breaths (and my oh-so-comfortable<br />
dip in the bed). Up and down the sheets go. It’s warm and calming, isn’t it?<br />
“Like a cello toaster,” I say to myself.<br />
She turns to face me, but I know she wouldn’t be fully awake until the alarm<br />
started ringing. I raise my head and gaze at the fragile bone structure and thin<br />
expanse of motionless flesh lying next to me. Teaching arts and crafts to ten-year-olds<br />
must burn a lot of calories; she never thinks twice about the garbage she puts into her<br />
stomach, I thought unsympathetically. I look under the sheets to critically observe my<br />
own body. When I left my lifeguard job and moved in with Sarah that night during the<br />
storm (she hasn’t swam since), I don’t think my lean body followed me. I do try to run<br />
every day while she’s at school, though. As long as I keep up with the chores and am<br />
here to greet her when she returns home in the evenings, Sarah doesn’t seem to mind<br />
what I get up to during the day.<br />
Aretha Franklin’s “I Say a Little Prayer” plays in my head. Man, that woman can<br />
sing.<br />
Brr Brr Brr. Stupid alarm—I wish I could bury it. The damned noise would go on<br />
and on until she, at last, decides to stir herself up. If only she asked me, I could have<br />
woken her far more gently. After all, my methods are just as reliable as any man-made<br />
contraption.<br />
I’m hungry. I hope there’re still peanuts left from last night.<br />
Thank goodness she finally put an end to that infernal ringing. I look at her messy,<br />
slightly wavy strands of brown hair that currently tangles across her freckled face and<br />
remember that it wasn’t just her warm personality that attracted me to her.<br />
I realize it will be a slow day because it’s been seven whole minutes since she<br />
turned off the alarm, and she still has yet to get up. I get off the bed and draw the<br />
curtains at the window, and the room is immediately illuminated by a bright, spring<br />
morning. She buries her face into her pillow to hide from the sunlight and then makes<br />
a sound that is similar to the one she uses when she has to pretend her mother’s<br />
casserole tastes delicious, except this one is raspier in the throat. Slow day. I get back<br />
on the bed and kiss the back of her neck until she bursts of laughter.<br />
“You’re going to be late for work!”<br />
9
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