Growing Old With You

We spent a lot of time just reading together, Karen and I. One time we read this article in The Financial Times about the fact that some people like Zurich, boring as it is, because it is quiet and clean...and boring. She tried to explain to me that she was one of those people. So am I, it turns out. I'd like a more intellectual set of people around me, but it's okay if all we do is talk at cafes or at the grocery store. It is a little hard for me to be surrounded by houses, though.
The last neighborhood Karen lived in, Dumbo, was kind of a combination of industrial, hip places and Zurich-like calm.

I have a colleague who has some of Karen's features and is the same age she would've been. Today I looked over at her face and mused about how pleasant it would be to have seen Karen grow old. The creases in the face outlining the stellar mouth, the reading glasses pulling you toward the eyes. The comfort of knowing not to be that anxious, most of the time. Just reading the newspaper and giggling about stories which seem far-fetched. Settling into a routine and still finding each other beautiful in a different way. The shoulders, like sandstone, carved and weightless. Confident hands, neat as pearls, both of us finally having figured out how to keep our nails clean and short. We were always digging, if only into our own fingers and that made for messy paws.

Most of all, we would have had the pleasure of not wanting to rush. Her apartment felt like a beach house and we could have just drifted into the waves while reading the morning paper.
I could have slept on her shoulders and she on mine, breezy with the day.