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It snowed all day and into the night and I thought of the two of us snowbound in the house in Ferndale, on that quiet edge of Detroit. I thought of the morning and making us pancakes, and you in the living room changing the music on your father’s stereo. I came up behind you and slid my arms around your stomach and pulled your pajamaed body into the crook of mine. I kissed the top of your head, and smelled your shampoo, and we stayed there watching the snow fall outside the patio doors, you leaning into me, and me resting my chin on the top of your head like a dog. Knowing that this was our weekend, and there was nowhere else we needed to be. That no one would intrude. And how we had everything we could ever want in that house, in our winter bunker. Sleeping through the long mornings as the clouds cast the room in blue. Breathing in the warm smell of laundered sheets, and nuzzling down the length of you to kiss all the places that drew me near. And how your body would pull itself to me. How it would ebb, in tides, and knowing that sea inside. And the careful tension of a thousand thoughts letting go, one by one, and flowing down from you into me, and consuming you, and you allowing yourself to be consumed. And our bodies curled into a single shape of love. In the warm belly of a Michigan city. And the snow falling outside, magnifying the warmth within, draping us in its quiet blanket.

Winter Bunker
A short story by Sparrow Hall

Originally published in The Good Things About America, 2009

Photo Credit: Allison Wells