Zombie

Waking, showering, and dressing this morning wasn’t as arduous as it had been the past week: Pushing my alarm back 15 minutes seemed to work perfectly. I never cared much for 4:45AM anyway. She was still asleep, curled up with a pillow in Her arms. I was worried I would wake Her as I sat down on the edge of the bed, sinking in ever so slightly. She stirred silently in while I put on my socks. I never really realized just how beautifully a flickering fluorescent flame can illuminate the sleeping face of a faultless innocence.

That’s a lie, of course. I know it was not the illumination of the lamplight—that would be giving inanimacy too much credit. She is beautiful on Her own, without products and fancy low-energy lights. It’s a shame that She only knows it when She is asleep.

Every day is the same, begging for a few coins of compliment and pity while awake, but unimaginably beautiful when She just lets Herself live. It is the living that I find most attractive. When awake, She isn’t really alive. She is a zombie of the media’s emphasis on nothing, wishing to feast on Her own fat and flesh. “But silly zombie, don’t you understand that eating your cancer won’t get rid of it? It will simply spread elsewhere.” I suppose I give zombies too much credit if I think they can reason and comprehend like their living counterparts. It isn’t the insatiable hunger that makes them dangerous: It is their numbers. Why be alive when you can be a zombie? You will have so many friends if you simply lose yourself.

I didn’t fall in love with a zombie. It was that sleeping “horror” of a woman who I could not stand being without. Hah, calling Herself a “horror,” when the zombie within is so much scarier and more dangerous. I’d like Her to watch Herself sleeping, listen to Her scoff and complain about Her sleeping visage, then squeeze Her in my arms until all the un-life drained from Her body, all the paleness drained from Her face, and all the happiness of the past drained back into Her heart.