The Words Between Us

When you read the same sentence in a book, do you, I wonder, think the same thoughts as I? Does your mind conjure the same image of the maiden with red locks and fretful stare or do you see her another way as if we had two different sets of eyes not the same I always pictured when thinking about us and the way our strides are so alike, the way our noses both turn sideways a little crooked to the right, the way our chins both have that little indent a blurb below our mouths that both smile the same when the other steps into the room. I know you’ve read this book, the one I read under the covers next to you, your left thigh warming my small cold body until I am comfortable enough to turn another page and read the part about the ship lost at sea and the drowning men and the girlfriends and wives and mothers and sisters they left behind and I know you read that part and for a moment I turn to you and think to ask what you felt what you thought about those pages that give so intimate a description of sinking, losing breath slowly and inevitably lungs collapsing, a forgone conclusion, but my lips, thin like yours, press together and I decide not to interrupt the story you read beside me because I know you must have thought what I thought.