Lumbar-Sick

A Short Story

“Before we sleep together, you should know I have restless legs,” she said.

“Okay,” I replied, sliding under the covers.

She nestled beside me, shuffling about, making happy murmurs.

Wavering on sleep’s edge, I held her, eventually kissing her lightly and turning away. As I teetered into dream, I felt her feet climb up my legs, over my bum, and press lightly into my lower back.    

            Under the covers, her body coiled like a question mark, and when locked with mine, became a new glyph. Perhaps it seems strange, but to us it was the most natural thing in the world – sole to spine. A question posed and answered.

            The next morning, she said she’d not slept so well in years. It was as if her feet had been roving, searching for a back to settle against. I told her my usual lumbar pain didn’t feel so bad. Her feet had done what my expensive Norwegian chair could not. She said she’d never been so happy to be compared to a chair.

            She was a long-distance runner, and would get itchy if she remained in the same spot too long. There was a constant movement to her. She joked her restless legs were a way of training while asleep. When we first met, it seemed to me there was a music only she could hear: she would tap her feet in time, or bob her head. The tread-song, we called it. Sometimes I’d catch her staring out the window, bouncing her knee up and down, and ask “Is the tread song singing?”

            I was content to be still, as most writers are. Being with her, I became a stave, over which she’d paint her notes.

            After a year of sleeping in the same bed, feet to back, a silence spread through her. She became withdrawn, as if by delving into herself, she might find the song’s source, fan it back to life. One evening she approached me as I sat at my desk, writing. She laid her hands on my shoulders, kissed my head, and spoke quietly. “I can’t hear it anymore.”

            There was a long pause, as we listened in hope, both knowing it was gone.

            “Okay,” I said. “I understand.”

            The next morning, I woke with a sore back. She’d risen early, as she always did, but this time, she’d made breakfast and left it in the kitchen with a note. I didn’t need to read it.

            As I ate cold bacon, my lower back ached with a phantom tail. It was as if the bones were parting, drifting, searching. Perhaps everyone has some part of them that’s searching; a bone, calling to another, somewhere on Earth. As if a creator mixed up two parts from separate assemblies.

            She’s running long distance again, sending pictures of her medals as she wins them.

            I’m writing again, sitting at my desk every day, trying to keep good posture, failing.

Photo by Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash