I wake up panting like a dog. I look at my hands and recognize them as my hands. I can move them. I am awake, really awake. It is dawn and grey light floods our bedroom. I am soaked with sweat and my whole body hurts. No details, not yet, but I know they will come back to me. I can feel it in my body, beginning to tense up, bracing. There is another feeling; my spine tightens with a familiar excitement. I don’t need to reach out to touch myself. I know I am sexually aroused.

Ruth is right there, next to me, right where she always is. One spindly arm folded over her head like a little wing. I watch her face, the side that is visible. Age hasn’t blunted her features, but sharpened them, and she’s even more birdlike now, which suits her, though I can’t decide how I feel about it. I’ve always thought of Ruth as a bird but at first she was mostly a theory of one. At twenty-one she was very vague as a creature, her outline not quite so defined. I thought we would solidify together into a single shape, not separately. But I was wrong. She’s hardened into a singular version of herself: these days she fully embodies her own spirit animal. It has become easier to pin Ruth down to one bird or another, though never a single species in particular. I’ve spotted a swallow’s head as she exits the shower with wet hair all slicked back, a robin’s proud chest when she is busy in the kitchen. Bird watching. I know this isn’t a funny joke – even to me it sounds a little desperate – but the fact of her aging makes me uneasy. It’s unnerving that it is there in plain view for everybody to see. She wouldn’t have it this way, if she could help it. She’s quite private. People think that change goes unnoticed in those with whom we share close quarters, but I don’t agree. I don’t notice it daily, but I’m certainly aware of it. It’s not about the aging itself; I’m not so naive to think it isn’t happening to me too. It’s just that it suits some people better than others. What I liked about Ruth was that she used to be an intangible creature, an ethereal angel. These days, I wonder if I would find white marble under her bedclothes if she’d let me strip her naked. All smooth, with no openings: a statue of an angel.