My girlfriend is doing her ablutions, breathing in deeply, holding the poses. Like a bird does, I say, while she lifts her arms into a t-shape, tilts her head from one side to the other.

My girlfriend has her eyes squeezed shut against the sun. My girlfriend’s face is profiled along a line of picture windows. The sunlight coming in comes to a point at the tip of her nose, wavers while she exhales.

When my girlfriend is finished with her ablutions she wraps her arms around herself. Her fingers inch toward each other across the ruts of her shoulder blades, dip into the hollows.

I have been calling my girlfriend my girlfriend even though she is a woman several years older than I am. This means we are at different stages of life, have a different set of available outcomes. This means matters of disagreement:

My girlfriend doesn’t like when I squeeze her tits in public.

My girlfriend doesn’t like that I use the word tits.

I have a list of what else my girlfriend doesn’t like that I do. This list includes my Neil Young impression, a habit I have of leaving used towels in a pile on the bathroom floor, and the fact that I speak about marriage as if it is something any two people could do.

My girlfriend says I don’t say the right things when I am with her friends. She says I am always talking to everyone about the weather. Whether it is spring coming or it is summer, I am telling people there is rain in the forecast, that we need it. I am telling people that what they said is cerebral. What I am telling people this for is when I have no clue what they are trying to tell me, but don’t see any reason for them to know that.

A tactic like this can only last so long.

It gets to a point where it begins to sound overeager.

All of my girlfriend’s friends are named Matthew or Matt. They are all adamant about the act of self-improvement, are learning new old languages like Latin, are aware of their own implicit biases.

It is awful.

It is not as bad as I make it sound.

Another thing my girlfriend doesn’t like is that I call what she is doing her ablutions, which is not the right word for what that is.

How many times, my girlfriend says.

She says, I think you living here will be a disaster.

The month before this one I moved into what had been my girlfriend’s apartment, but is now considered ours. It is one-bedroom, one-bath, a closet without a door, which is why I see my girlfriend doing her ablutions, which are not actually called ablutions.

Ablutions are what a bird does to keep their wings clean for flight. As in: preening, grooming, the baths they take in shallow pools of water.

In Christianity, ablutions are a different sort of washing. As in: ritual purification of the soul. As in: Baptism.

I am not religious, although I have often wished I was.

I won’t go into it, but because of that and other reasons I have panic attacks while my girlfriend sleeps in bed beside me.

I think you living here will be a disaster, my girlfriend says again because she thinks I haven’t heard her say it the time before.

I have. I listen, but what I am waiting to hear from my girlfriend is whatever she will say next, about condemned buildings and disappointment, about this being a world of bodies.

What my father said was an older woman could teach me a thing or two.

My father said the thing about older women was that they got older first.

My father, at the time, was married to my mother, who was eight years older than he was, and he was miserable about it.

Later, he would take the time to tell me when it had gotten to the point where he was imagining other women.

Where we were everyone was talking about swimming, going to do it, in lakes, in the ocean, the feeling saltwater leaves behind after it has dried on your skin.

This was my sister’s wedding, a great big farm, early August. My father took a sip from his drink and spit crushed ice back into his glass. He held the glass against his forehead, turning it. He said, What do you think? Am I coming through all right?

My father died, obviously, and my mother still lives. This could be considered the great irony of their relationship.

I believe I am using irony right when I use it that way, but I am not sure and would not argue if the question was raised.

If I were to ask one of my girlfriend’s friends— one of the many Matthews or Matts, it wouldn’t matter which— they would tell me the age of irony was over and done with, explain that New Sincerity was what was next, and suggest I read the novels of David Foster Wallace.

I would say that I have. I would say, Cerebral.

My girlfriend would listen to this for as long as she could manage.

My girlfriend once brought me to a place she had lived before, pointed, and said, This was it.

I know I am too unmoored to marry this woman or do anything else.

I have a life that is spreading out before me, and I can imagine a future that I am sure will come true. In this future I am dressed for the weather, limping along the road, and feel almost lifelike.

Tomorrow, in the morning, while my girlfriend stretches and washes and dresses, I will lie in bed and think about falling, reaching the end of something. Below me there will be the mattress and the box spring and the floor, and then the floor below that, and then, finally, the earth.