The moonlight falls through squinting blinds, bowing softly to hug the arc of his naked body. The blankets are strewn about his toes as a girl, no more than sixteen, lays wide-eyed and  warm-bodied beside him.

She silently watches the dreams come and go beneath his eyelids, she quietly feels his chest rise, rise then fall and she listens to the heavy breathing that accompanies it. Beautiful breathing, she thinks, tracing generous lips with fingertips.

The air is cool but she is alight.

Everything in this room bathes in blue shade. She watches the alarm clock beside the bed, numbers coming and going out of fashion before her eyes. Now it wears 0, 4, 2 and 9. Melbourne will burn beneath the April sun shortly. She does not need the sun for warmth anymore but the city always will.

His arm no longer sleeps wrapped around her and she feels the emptiness below her breasts as though nothing is really something after all. He sighs in sleep and it is not a heavy sigh but a light-hearted sigh, he reaches for and finds her hand. She half hopes sleep will try the same and half hopes sleep will leave her be; to soak in his magical presence a while longer.

She writes bad poetry in her head, sleep does not attempt to take her. She crawls from the bed, finding a white shirt of his on the floor; pulling it over her head and letting it hang awkwardly at her thighs. She misses the mirror leaning against her bedroom wall at home- big enough to hold all of her in a white frame.

The bathroom smells of aftershave, of soap, of bleach. She is blinded for several seconds by the bathroom light and she can hardly see herself in the mirror. She loves it. She cannot see the awkward face structure, small mouth and shadows beneath eyes. Then life focuses and stops down. When all is sharp she is glowing and her eyes are all blue. She grins the way she was grinning when she was six, when life was good.

Because life is goddamn great right now and her body is telling her so. Butterflies dance and mate in her womb and her heart has swollen and hardly fits inside of her any longer. She is all soft skin waiting to be touched, kissed, held.

Now sleep finally comes. She stumbles through the dark, eyes readjusting, exposure compensating. When she finds him his arm is stretched across her place in the bed and he has lost repose. He seems ill at ease in the vast bed alone. She kisses his forehead and climbs in beside him, curling up against him with her breath at his neck. Oh dear god, she breathes, I really love you M.

A technicolour dream flickers and flashes behind his eyelids and in the morning he'll wonder if she is another dream. He won't care.