Innocence of sleep

There's something about someone sleeping, an intangible sense of purity and serenity. I'm quite sure even the devil will look innocent as a child, when asleep.

I was lost while solving a puzzle of my own creation. That's when I saw her, sleeping like a child, or maybe pretending to be asleep. 

It was my wish to see her sleep, I told her long ago. For all I know, she mistook my connotations, alas.

I sat in front of her, so that if she got tired of her pretense, she'd open her eyes to see exactly what she expected to see. But she hid behind the veils of pretense, until her act remained a pretense no more, and beautiful sleep lifted her in its bosoms. 

I saw her nod her head, while asleep, as though answering questions I shall know not what they were, ever. An itch here, a scratch there, and frayed strands of her hair, I saw everywhere. 

I kept looking at what looked like an angel, dressed in black, with strands of white, telling be nothing in life is completely black, neither white. It's all shades of gray, and all of them look beautiful apparently.

I had never seen her eyes more closely. Never at least seen them so closely when they were closed. So I needed not to worry about her stealing her gaze from me. 

A part of me told myself that she knew how closely I was looking at her. Shamelessly so. But then, a part of me rises fruitlessly in justification saying, "How is a beautiful woman any different from a beautiful painting?"

You stand with dropped jaws in front of an intricate work of art. And then you justify yourself when you do the same in the presence of nature's own wonderful creation. Why this hypocrisy? While my mind was in two minds of its own, I did not deny my eyes the pleasure of what was right in front of me. 

Everything about the sight was smooth. The contours of the face, the shape of the lips, the way her silhouette started from her soft, delicate looking neck, entering her back, that swept over her short spine into the small of her lower back. The line that sketched her back into her derrière felt like a silent poetry. 

No one utters a word, and yet, everyone knows the meaning of what remains untold. 

How can something be so irresistible, so tantalizing, and yet so innocent looking? And this is exactly where I lose track and sight of sanity. 

I can only thank my fortune that she was asleep. For when awake, she can trace my gaze on herself. And then she turns restless. She breathes harder, and the pretense of ignorance makes itself more obvious than the North star on a clear night. 

I just hope he doesn't sleep too long. Else I'll have to kiss her back into wakefulness.