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Chapter Text

Sunday March 11

Astonishment and joy. Astonishment and joy.

There are things I cannot speak of candidly in the day to day ledger. Secret things that I prefer to hold close and shelter, gifts and wonderments for me alone. I will write them instead in this small black book and I will keep it in between the pages of my Atlas, a place that Dyer will never go, for he has not the imagination nor spirit to long for the openness of other as I do. He is yoked to what he believes is his lot and has never thought to think beyond it. At times I pity him for his lack of ingenuity but today I am glad for it, for he cannot imagine the true nature of what exists between Tallie and I.

Oh…

Tallie!

Even now, as I write this by a low candle in the close, hot stench of the outhouse (where I must go so as not to be discovered) my lips burn with the memory of hers. I am unmoored---a boat set adrift by a strong wind, tossing on a tumultuous sea. Tallie is the thunderstorm that has illuminated all my dark and cast my whole being into the open. I am wholly undone. She has opened a door I cannot shut. What is to come?

I am still unsure if earlier today was not some type of fever dream. I can feel the heat rise off the back of my neck as I think of Tallie once again. How a rush of blood had crept into her cheeks at our indiscretion and fanned across her fair face, coloring it a dusky rose. She is all the color and fire of the sky at a day’s end, and I cannot help but want to draw close to her warmth. Am I to be an Icarus I wonder? I can only hope the wings I feel that are propelling my heart upwards towards her are not made of wax, catapulting me to sure destruction.

I think though, that perhaps the flight is worth the falling. This peculiar rising that I feel is better a feeling than I’ve ever had the good fortune to encounter. I feel as if I have been sleeping and have just awoken or started to dream. I fear I shall not sleep tonight, as every moment will now be spent wondering after her and waiting for her return.

Sunday March 26

I see her small and swift in the distance. Even from afar, I can tell it’s her, I’ve memorized her gait, she moves like a river. Every time she appears up over the ridge I startle; my heart leaps at the sight of her. Her returning is both unexpected and routine. Every time she leaves I feel as if I shall never see her again and every time she reappears it feels like I’m seeing her with new eyes. What a wonder.

Now she’s stomping across the field, her hair blowing wild about her face and the dog bounding with glee up the path in front of her. My chest grows tight and close and the hand that I have placed there cannot calm the galloping of my wayward heart. Then she is at the door and blows in with such force that I must take a step backwards. Her color is high and her eyes are shining, wet. She draws the back of her hand slow across her brow and closes her eyes against it with a deep sigh. When she opens them again they meet mine for a second of quick, hot blue before dropping to her shoes. A coldness starts to creep up my back. She is wound tight and stiff and does not lean into my orbit.
She is upset, I can feel it in the way she stands, so drawn into herself.

I cannot do or say as I want because Dyer is here. He greets her cordially and remains sunk and doleful in his chair for 30 minutes past. Tallie and I stand with the whole room between us, forcing pleasantries and talk of news and the weather. He finally rises, touches the brim of his hat and sets off. Both of us watch him leave, rooted to our spots until he vanishes over the ridge. Once we are sure he is gone I bridge the gap between us. She crosses her arms, angles herself away from me. I grab her wrist and pull her gently closer, tilt her chin up so her eyes are forced to meet mine.

“Are you… are you cross?”

She does not answer, only pulls away slightly and averts her eyes again. Her jaw tenses and relaxes quickly, a fluttering of wings, something she told me that she does when she is trying to calm her quickened blood.

“Oh”. I stiffen and almost lose my breath at the thought of it. Surprise. “At----at me?”

She finally looks up of her own accord, and the blue of her eyes burns hotter than before, a thousand cloudless summer skies.

“Abigail”. She breathes my name so softly under her breath that I have to lean into her exhale to hear it. She finally steps into my space.

“You have destroyed me”. Her voices raises a little and I can see the wetness of tears shining on her cheeks. “I am useless”. Here her voice gains strength, thunders out of her. A roar. “I am listless. Doleful. Unreasonable. I feel as if I am wanting for something but cannot name what it is I wish for..” She pauses. Looks hard into me, unblinking. Misery.

I swallow hard. “What is it you want of me?” It comes out more abrasively pleading than I meant.

She breathes out through her nose; a slight, measured sound. “Be gentle with me, Abigail.” Her eyes look wide and almost fearful.

I am chastened. I step closer to her, make myself soft, lower my voice to almost a whisper.

“Tallie, what do you want?”

“I want to lay bare for you all of the hoardings of my imagination. The things I have been playing over in my mind for the hours… the days that I cannot see you.”

I say nothing and hold myself very, very still. For a while, our breath is the only sound that passes between us. Then she speaks again.

“I cannot eat or sleep. Your kisses swept through me like the measles did that poor village last spring, laying waste to everything in their path. I had told myself to abolish all desire for comfort or any sort of happiness before immediately abandoning that resolution. I am,” she shakes her head, frantically searching for the words in exasperation and then finally finding it, she flings it out of her mouth. “Unhinged”.

I am still silent. I can not pull the words from my mouth that furiously swim in my mind, spring from my heart. I open my mouth and only breath comes out.

“Abigail”, her eyes catch mine, flashing. “Say something.” She says it forcefully, and suddenly unbinds my tongue.

I almost cry out when she grabs at my elbow with her free hand.

“How was I to know what was happening to me?”

The words come out quick and hot, sharper than I want, but I keep going.

“There is no instruction book for this, at least not one that I am aware of. Something rises in me when you approach, like hair on the the back of a dog. The thought of you has buoyed me this week. I have taken shelter in it, the way the chickadees take to the depths of the evergreens to keep the snow and ice and wind at bay. I believe we are now encountering a species of education that proceeds from being forced to confront that which we never before have acknowledged. Will never be able to…publicly acknowledge.”
A heaviness hangs between us that I cannot name.

She smooths her dress, steps back. Takes a breath, swallows.

“Can we share some tea?” This is said barely above a whisper and I can see she is trying to steady herself, pulling back from the brink of whatever precipice we had just been standing on.

“Of course”.

She slumps into the same chair she sat in last week, languid and cat-like. I can feel her eyes on me, stripping me to the skin. I turn my back to her, trying to quiet my riotous blood.

I hear her blow through her lips as I pour the tea.

“My nights have been tortuous. I have lain in my marriage bed and my body has been cold for—-“ she trails off and I hear her exhale again. Her matter of fact tone has been betrayed by this pause and I can hear her trying to slow her breath. When I look back she closely examining her nails, her teeth worrying her bottom lip.
I put the cups on the table with clumsy hands, trying not to spill the fresh brewed tea. I turn to her and she lifts her eyes to mine, then drops them to the floor.
I stoop to where she is in the chair and catch her chin, search her eyes. To speak in this moment takes every bit of my energy and it still comes out like a strangled, breathless whisper.

“For…what?”

She stands to meet me and brings her lips in close to my ear. I feel the energy shift in the room. Her breath is ragged and hot against my jaw.

“For want.” An endless beat, an exhale borne of nerves and then, more than I could have hoped for. A special heat.

“Of you”. Our eyes meet again and then her hands are suddenly at my face and she is pulling me towards her with a desperate urgency. Her lips are on mine again and again, meeting and parting, like I imagine the sea meets and parts from the shore.

She pulls away from me slowly and presses her forehead to mine. We pant in tandem, recovering from our sudden passion. So many unspoken things linger in the silent air between us. A wild flurry of warmth has started to swirl in my abdomen and the feeling makes me bashful. I feel the blush bloom across my cheeks.

“How are we to live this way?” Tallie asks in a smaller voice than I have ever heard her use. “How am I to suffer the endless minutes away from you? To pretend as if I don’t want to spend each day with you and you alone? The other parts of my life have dulled in comparison to the brightness of the hours spent in your company.”

I let out a small laugh, trying to hide that I too, have begun to cry.

“Oh Tallie”, I say thickly, “You are a poet.”

She says nothing, just presses her wet cheek to my own and closes her eyes, inhaling deeply.

I take her hands in mine.

“Tallie, I’ve never believed in romantic love. I’ve always thought that there was only a certain gentle fondness that comes from sharing a life and learning to enjoy small blessings together. You---” I pause, acutely aware that I am about to lay myself bare. “You have awakened parts of my heart that I did not know were lacking. Our affection for each other is something wholly different than anything I’ve ever---” my voice breaks, as my chest grows ever tighter and then uncoils all at once. I feel my words fall away, swallowed by the enormity of the emotion I cannot yet speak aloud.

“My Abigail”. My name, spoken like a hymn. She smiles and it is the one that I think she keeps hidden at the corner of her mouth, just for me. “You are more than I ever thought possible.”

This time I am the one who reaches for her. That same soft smell of rosewater and green, wet earth. The warm, biscuity smell at her hairline. This kiss is gentle and sweet and she gives a soft sigh at our parting, drawing close again with a small smile.

“I have to go”. She says it low, and she looks out from under her lashes with a sentiment so curious in her eyes that my heart nearly stops. She moves slowly to the door, slips out the way she came in. When she reaches the threshold of the field she pauses--- and I can see her shoulders heaving quickly. She looks like how I imagine Diana from the classics looks after a battle, with her wild hair and strong figure, framed just so by the setting sun. I am leaning against the doorframe and admiring her when she is suddenly no longer there, but she is upon me. She is kissing me and kissing me and kissing me. Her kisses are hungry and hot, answering the question that my first one posed so timidly last week---yes, yes, yes. She pushes me against the doorframe and for the first time are bodies are so close that no light can get through. Tiny stars of spark run through me, the feeling of the snap of touching your hand to harness metal in the cold of a dry winter’s day. The palm of her hand is against my stomach, small and burning like a coal and then it is suddenly pressing into my womanhood with an excited fervor. I yelp with astonishment and can’t help but look down at it. She gently grabs my cheek and picks my face up to hers again.

“I believe that intimacy increases goodwill, and if that is so then every moment we spend together will make us more cheerful workers. Wouldn’t our farms benefit from that?” She says this quietly, our noses touching, the breath from her words a warm rush against my skin.

I can’t help the small crying laugh that escapes my lips. I smile helplessly against her, my body humming, a chasm of desire opened within. She presses forward.
“Wouldn’t our husbands?” Her voice is low and husky. Goose pimples rise on my skin. Our heavy breathing fills the room as she moves her hand against my skirt. I tilt my hips into her.

“All our burdens will be lightened”, I manage in a whisper. She stops for a minute and draws back to look at me and the emotion I had seen in her eyes earlier is no longer veiled. She moves quickly and is at me again, drinking of my lips as if she has an unquenchable thirst and I am the only source of water. I find her drawing soft gasps and moans from me that escape from my throat without any forethought. A boldness arises in me and I lean down to roughly pull her hips snug against mine. I bury my head in her neck and propel her back against the door frame, acutely aware of every inch of her, suddenly impatient at all the cloth between us. I find myself gathering bunches of her dress in my greedy fists and gasping into her ear as she returns my insistent pressing.

She slides a hand up my back, toys with the strings of my dress, parts from me to gaze from under her eyelashes, a lazy half smile on her lips.

“What about Dyer?” This in the lowest voice possible because I can not steady the frantic shaking of my breath.

Her lips find my ear again.

“Why do you think I brought my dog? He will let us know when friend or stranger crests the ridge. We will have more than enough time to get decent”.
I know not what it is that passes in the ensuing look between us, but it feeds me with enough bravery to take her hand and lead her to my bed. We sit down there together, and she kisses me long and hard. It is enough to make me cry out again.

She grabs my hand and presses it to her breast so I can feel her quickly pounding heart.

“If a marriage is the joining of two souls in the eyes of God and heaven, then are we not that? My soul is surely more bound to yours that it ever was to any mans.”
My words are stuck again, but she doesn’t care this time. Her hands are working at my dress and she is bringing her lips up to my ear. She holds herself there, as still as a winter forest, her eyes on the door. For just for a moment I let myself feel a slight bolt of fear.

All my anxieties vanish with her next words, whispered so sweetly that the angels would weep.

“So be my wife.”

______________________________

Afterwards, when she leaves, I feel emptied out, hollow. All my goodwill has been burned up by our transgressions and I am melancholy again. It’s as if she was never even here.

Again, I ask myself——

What is to come?

When I close my eyes and think of her, the rising returns.
An empty vessel, filling again.
Icarus, ascending towards the sun.
Just for a moment, my cup runneth over.

Chapter Text

Sunday March 11

Blue.

That is always the color that makes me think of her, dream of her.

When the light is soft in the morning---just before dawn, the shadows long and purple on the wall and the quiet is draped like a blanket over the world, that color blue. It is then---only then---in those indigo hours ---that I let my mind entertain thoughts of her. These are the types of musings that can never touch the light, but only dance on the edge of it.

And then Finney stirs and I shut my eyes tight against them, beating them back and away, snuffing them out like a candle.

At least I used to be able to fend them off.

Until today.

Today I am drowning in blue.
_______________________________________________________________

She moves like the wind, at once as gentle and sweet as a breeze and then as forceful and howling as a gale; as overwhelming as a storm.

A tug at my dress.

A cool hand at the nape of my neck.

A tangle through my curls.

Her eyes on my eyes.

Her lips on my lips.
Her lips on my lips.
Her lips on my lips.

The fresh memory of it repeats, repeats, repeats.

Yes.

A blue wind.
_________________________________________________________________
Before we bury our dead we lay them out and place coins atop their eyes. A tithe for the ferryman. A toll to enter Heaven.

I hold my ache for her like gold in my hands. I press my palms to the back of my eyelids.

Maybe I have died and this state of tortuous suspension between visits is my purgatory.

Maybe this exquisite misery is to be my offering. My payment for paradise.

__________________________________________________________________________

I once met a women from Wales. She was lying on her back in a field as I was passing through, her eyes like crystallized sorrow. Her gaze startled me so. Such longing, such sadness, but also a heavy shadow, a shaded remnant of joy.

I’d asked if she was alright.

No. She’d replied. And then tried to explain to me a word for which there is no translation in our backwards and clumsy English.

Hiraeth. She’d said. Quietly. With a respectful reverence.

I understood it to be a longing for a person or place to which you cannot return. A yearning for a thing that no longer exists. A desperate pining for a ghost.

I shall feel that for her, for Abigail. When we are inevitably parted for good.

A desperate pining for a ghost. A longing for a place to which I can never return.

________________________________

Sunday March 26

I am sick for want of her. I now know what people mean when they say the word heartsick.

The rest of my life has become and unbearable march of minutes, a count down of the hours until I can look upon her countenance again.

And it is miserable.

I am miserable.

I feel as if I’ve been swallowed whole by it. I am Jonah, despairing in the belly of the whale. Surrounded by so much water but not a drop to drink. Desire and rage in equal measure rise up against my throat, spread though my limbs, rendering them heavy.

How am I to exist this way? How are we to exist this way?

I used to be able to find small joys in each day, to seek out the light in the grey, trapped cycle that is my life. Now I find myself seeking and wanting only her.

I am the moth and she is the flame and I am destined to be consumed. But I want to be used in such a way. Baptized. Consecrated by her heat. Completed engulfed by it. Devoured bit by bit until there is nothing left of me.

Though she is only across the field (the measure of a mile and 2 furloughs) it feels as vast as an ocean---a stretch of uncountable miles; an impossibility of space. My very bones ache for her---the pull of her strong, fine hands on my dress; the soft sweetness of her hungry, seeking mouth.

I am unraveling.

When I am around her I feel an unbearable lightness of being; an aliveness that defies explanation. And when we are parted, especially in this moment, I am crushed by the weight of my life without her.

And I will go to her and tell her how intolerable it has been.
_________________________________________________________________________________

By the time I crest the hill I have thought of every way that our indiscretion has been undoing me, ruining me. I am quaking with it, it is pushing up under my skin like boiling water pushing at the lid of a pot.

Why have we opened this door if all we can do is stand in the threshold, never to be able to fully pass through?

Why did she grab my chin just so with her slender fingers after my beat of hesitation and press her lips breathlessly to mine?

Why?
Especially if we had to live parted like this, yoked to men who cling to us like ill-fitting clothes.

I have worked myself into a fervor and I feel the color rise, hot and pink, up to my hairline. Salt threatens to betray my eyes, I feel the despair pricking at their corners.

I rush through the door with all the strength of my roaring pain propelling my step. I feel the anguish rise within me and must draw my hand across my brow to keep it at bay. My dog bounces in behind me, unaware of my acute misery.

I meet Abigail’s gentle gaze for a frantic, charged second before my sullenness overtakes me and I can no longer hold her eyes. I stare stormily at the tops of my feet, keenly aware of the space between us. I fold into myself and angle away from her, towards the door.

We shouldn’t have done it.

But now it is so, and we cannot take it back, go back to before, when all that existed was the faint suggestion of heat; a small spark of longing flashing within a meeting of eyes held for too long.

And so, I must tell her.

But Dyer is here. We are forced to pretend pleasantries---to speak of the weather and the fields, the neighbors and the news. Finally---Finally! Dyer gently touches the brim of his hat and nods, then sets off, out the door and over the ridge.

We are both still and silent as we watch him leave, as frozen as startled deer until he disappears over the hill and turns up the road towards town.

Abigail lunges towards me, opening her arms, and though my heart leaps at the sight, the flash of anger returns, dark and hot, burning like a wound. I cross my arms and turn away, set my mouth in a small frown.

One of her sturdy, lovely hands encircles my wrist and I almost capitulate then, but I resist. And I resist still when she gently draws me to her and tilts my face towards hers, forcing our eyes to meet. And there is that searching, wondering gaze again, the one that lays me bare. My stomach flutters and my blood grows hot and loud in my ears. I clench my jaw against it, willing it to quiet its frenzied singing.

“Are you cross?” She asks, her dark brows knitting above her daft, beautiful, concerned face. Why must she be so lovely? It is torture. I feel my mouth grow tighter and I pull back from her slightly, drop my eyes to study the floorboards again.

“Oh,” a gentle gasp and then a sharper intake of breath. A realization. She drops my wrist and her eyebrows raise, ever so slightly. I hear her breath rush out of her. “At---me?” Her tone is incredulous. And worried.

I look up at her and feel myself alight with it, all of it---the yearning desire, the haunted thoughts, the pain of space and time and not enough, never enough.

“Abigail”, I breathe. And it is sharp and small and precious. She leans into the echo of her name and I finally step closer into her. My eyes are going to give me away because they are filling, filling and there is nothing I can do to stop it. My chest is growing tight and closing in upon itself and my voice comes in a jagged whisper.

“You have destroyed me”, the truth. “I am useless.” I feel my voice gaining strength, shaking and shimmering with the agony of it. “I am listless. Doleful. Unreasonable.” I am spitting the words at her and the tears are coming more steadily now, as I am realizing I am not cross with her, but cross at myself, cross at the world.

“I feel as if I am wanting something but I can not name what it is I wish for.” A lie. My wish does have a name and it is called the same as the woman standing in front of me. I look at her, into her, hoping that she will see through my falsehood.

I see her throat quiver as she swallows once, a nervous motion.

Her eyes are pleading.

“What is it you want of me?” this forceful, plaintive, like the bleating of a lamb.

I let a long breath out through my nose and feel a shakiness take hold of my gut. A fear. I glance up at her, this woman who could tear me apart with just a parting of her pretty lips.

“Be gentle with me, Abigail”. A soft and earnest request. A tender way to tell her of the power she holds over me.

She softens, I see her shoulders relax. Her head tilts as she steps closer to me still, her eyes never leaving my face.

“Tallie,” my name, barely above a whisper. It sounds like a prayer when she says it, like a poem. “What do you want?”

All I can see is blue. The blue of her dress. The way the light picks up the cyan undertones in her smooth, luminous skin. And I want to tell her about the blue. About the heat of my imaginings.

“I want to lay bare for you all the hoardings of my imagination. The things I have been playing over in my mind for the hours… the days that I cannot see you.” This comes out low and heavy, tinged with something neither of us can yet name. We let it hang there for a beat---two, our chests heaving in the silence between us.

“I cannot eat or sleep. Your kisses swept through me like the measles did that poor village last spring, laying waste to everything in their path. I had told myself to abolish all desire for comfort or any sort of happiness before immediately abandoning that resolution. I am,” I shake my head in exasperation as I cannot find a word to correctly describe the state I have been in. Then finally it comes to me and I gaze at her as it softly falls from my mouth. “Unhinged”. The confession feels raw and shameful and dances in the space between us.

Abigail’s mouth falls open and she looks at me with wide eyes. I feel my heart slow and stutter in my breast.

Have I said too much?

I look at her expectantly, waiting. Hoping.

Yet still, nothing. She opens and closes her mouth a few times, like a caught trout, and then closes her lips.

“Abigail”, I say, sharper than I mean, “say something”. Please.

I feel desperate. I clumsily catch her elbow with my hand and she starts and then speaks.

“How was I to know what was happening to me!?” she cries out, desperate, quick and sharp. Her eyes find mine again. Hold them.

“There is no instruction book for this, at least not one that I am aware of. Something rises in me when you approach, like hair of the back of a dog. The thought of you has buoyed me this week. I have taken shelter in it, the way the chickadees take to the depths of the evergreens to keep the snow and ice and wind at bay. I believe we are now encountering a species of education that proceeds from being forced to confront that which we never before have acknowledged. Will never be able to…publicly acknowledge.”
We are silent and staring at each other. The air between us feels like the turning of the wind before a storm. I feel my skin grow hot and damp and find myself wanting to reach for her. But I cannot. I will not. It will bring us naught but more misery in the parting.

I swallow my yearning back down and drag my hands across my dress to prevent myself from touching her. I break her gaze and spot the kettle on the stove, suck my teeth.

“Can we share some tea?” I can but barely whisper this as all my efforts are concentrated on holding myself just so in order to prevent me from completely coming apart.

“Of course”. She replies almost as quietly and turns her back to me, goes to the stove. I notice her hands are shaking.

I sink down into the nearest chair and sigh heavily.

I look at her straight, wonderful back and I cannot hide my thoughts. I think of what it would be like to slide the flat of my hand up her spine. To count each vertebra. To kiss them.

She pours the tea, hands still unsteady.

I blow out through my lips to help ease some of the feeling that has risen within me.

“My nights have been tortuous. I have lain in my marriage bed and my body has been cold for—-” I stop and exhale. Try to steady myself yet again.
I still don’t know if I should say. If I tell her this thing that I have been holding as close and precious as a promise---there will be no more secrets between us. It will all be laid out, plain. The true nature of my feelings.

I stare at my nails because I am too fearful to meet her gaze. I chew on my bottom lip, too hard. A painful habit from childhood.

She places the cups on the table and almost spills the tea. I can see a pull at the corner of her mouth, an anxious glint in her eye. I lift my face to look at her and I know that I will give myself away for I cannot hide from her, I could never hide from her. Fear squeezes at me again and I cast my eyes wildly about the room.

And then she stoops to me, hooks her finger underneath my chin and lifts it to hers, like a flower angling towards the sun. And I can see she knows. She already knows. And I feel as if I am flying and falling at the same time. Flung out into nothing.

“For what?” she asks, even though she already knows. And her words are strangled and thick; a low, tortured, hopeful whisper. Something loosens within me. A slow and lovely breaking and then a rush of wild, jubilant energy.

It makes me bold. Propels me upwards from the chair, rising to meet the cool length of her. I feel my eyes darken with all my blue thoughts, with the yawning desire of all my imaginings.
I take one step, two, buoyed by the sudden irregularity of her breathing, the delicate shade of rose that is blooming over her fair skin. I lean my head into her, hold myself back from pressing my lips to her jaw, the lovely hollow of her throat. I bring them close to her ear, so close that if I speak soft enough not even my dog will hear.

“For want.” I say, my tone low and bloated with desire. I swallow and close my eyes, my stomach now turning in knots, quivering with anticipation of what is surely to come.
Our eyes meet and it is like kindling suddenly burst into flame. A special heat.

Of what, they say. Say it.

“Of You.” I breathe, plain and forward. There.

And because there is nothing left to say, no more to confess, I reach up to cradle her face, to show her.

Her lips on my lips.
Her lips on my lips.
Her lips on my lips.

It is not enough. Never enough.

We part, our breasts heaving. I suddenly feel bashful, shy of her. Because of how roughly I had grabbed her, how feral I had let myself become. Base and animal. I now understand what drives Finney to creep into town at night and come back in the wee hours of the morning smelling of sweet tobacco and perfume.

But then I see a small and satisfied smile pulling at her lips and a joy starts to spread within me and then an anguish. To be parted from her will be unbearable, but it will make the meeting again all the sweeter. I place my forehead to hers and close my eyes, trying to calm the knocking of heart against my ribs as we pant in tandem.
And then a bolt of sadness knocks the wind out of me.

“How are we to live this way?” I ask, my voice very small, clogged with the tears that have begun again. “How am I to suffer the endless minutes away from you? To pretend as if I don’t want to spend each day with you and you alone? The other parts of my life have dulled in comparison to the brightness of the hours spent in your company.”

She laughs, but it is a strangled, doleful sound. A bark of agreement.

“Oh Tallie,” her voice is clouded with sorrow, “You are a poet.”

I press my face against hers so we are cheek to wet cheek. I close my eyes and take a breath, inhaling the heady scent of her. Bread dough and sweetgrass. Soap with a hint of rosemary and lavender. How could I ever love another?

I feel her hands find mine and her thumbs trace a rhythmic path across the tops of my knuckles.

“Tallie, I’ve never believed in romantic love. I’ve always thought that there was only a certain gentle fondness that comes from sharing a life and learning to enjoy small blessings together. You---” She pauses and catches her breath and then plunges forwards. “You have awakened parts of my heart that I did not know were lacking. Our affection for each other is something wholly different than anything I’ve ever---” her voice breaks and she can no longer continue. All she can do is look into me with her large and gorgeous eyes.

And she is so radiant in that moment that I feel as if I must be caught in one of my morning reveries because there is no way that this----that she---can be real.

Then she reaches out, touches my hair gingerly, tenderly. And then her slender, nimble fingers are tangling in it and pulling me down, down, to her mouth. A gentle, honest kiss. A kiss a wife might give a husband.

Oh, oh!. I think. Would I take you as my wife if I could.

I sigh at our parting and feel the joyful heat that has started to spread into my limbs, pool by my hip bones. I cannot stay.

If I stay I will lose myself completely. I will not be able to contain my need to be as near to her as possible.

“I have to go.” I say. Because if I don’t I will find it harder to leave later. In the after.

I turn and stride through the door, my dog at my heel.

I stop on the edge of the field and close my eyes. I can feel her watching me, running her gaze along the whole length of me. And then I don’t feel her eyes anymore.

I have always thought Orpheus a fool, when reading Virgil.

How could he look? I always thought. Fool.

But now I know. I feel it like an ache.

Don’t turn around. I think to myself. Because I know, if I do, we are bound for certain destruction. We will burn up until there is nothing left but ash. But suddenly I think of her. Her mouth. And I close my eyes.

Blue.

I am thinking sinful thoughts on this Sabbath day. But if loving her gets me admission to hell, then fling the gates wide. I will descend into Hades, smiling all the while.

I am Persephone and she is the pomegranate. I want her seeds on my tongue, her juice to drip down my chin. I do not care if our union will make the other areas of my life feel as stark and barren as winter. When we are together it will be spring.

I am turning. I am turning and I am going to her, all heat and streaming hair and want.

I want. I want. I want.
I need.

I am pushing into her, my fingers in her hair, my tongue darting between her parted lips, my body pressing, pressing. I am kissing her hungrily, hotly, needily. Not enough. Never enough.

She is backed against the door frame and our bodies are snug and burning against each other. My blood is singing, a curious vibration. I feel a strange tightening beneath my navel. My palms are roaming the whole of her, sweeping over every inch of exposed skin they can find. They are memorizing her, storing a map of her for my imagination to explore when we are parted. Flesh become memory become flesh.

Before I know what I am doing my hand is reaching down, down, hurrying through folds of cloth to find her most sensitive part. To hover there, stroking, working in slow, lazy circles.

She yelps, taken by surprise and her cheeks grow more red and her eyes widen with something like wonder and then she looks down at my hand. I pick up her face so I can look at her, but my hand keeps working---slow, slow and then picking up the pace just a little, applying just a slight bit more pressure, friction.

I bump my nose with hers, drawing in closer. I want to hear her breath grow fast and slow in turns, ragged.

“I believe that intimacy increases goodwill, and if that is so then every moment we spend together will make us more cheerful workers. Wouldn’t our farms benefit from that?” I smile and it feels deliciously wicked. I raise my eyebrows. “Wouldn’t our husbands?”

I move my hand just so and I feel her tilt into me, a gentle drive towards me, her hips seeking more. More. More. More.

“All our burdens will be lightened”. She whispers this in my ear and I can hear an edge of laughter there, a playfulness I didn’t think she possessed. I draw back to look at her and feel everything in my body surge towards her. I am an incoherent pillar of desire, wanting to only be as close as possible to her. And this isn’t enough. It. Is. Never. Enough.

I bring my lips to hers again.

Turn me to ash.

My lips are greedily kissing hers as my hand is keeping up with its ministrations below. Sounds like I have never heard are springing from Abigail, escaping unbidden from her throat. I feel drunk with them, my thoughts but one word---Abigail.

Then she rises against me, driving me back to the opposite side of the door, her head buried in my chest and all the sudden it is me who is crying out, keenly aware of the fluttering in my abdomen. And then her hands are upon me, roaming, grabbing roughly at the cloth between us. And she is thrusting her hips into mine, trying to be closer, closer.

I pick up a hand and toy coyly with the strings of her dress. I want to see her. All of her. And I want her to see me seeing her.

“What about Dyer?” a shaky whisper.

“Why do you think I brought my dog? He will let us know when friend or stranger crests the ridge. We will have more than enough time to get decent”.

We gaze at each other for a moment too long. I almost feel like laughing. Without another word Abigail takes my hand and gently pulls me to her bed. We sit.

Oh that I could marry thee.

I kiss her with all the force of the heat that is gathering between my thighs, with all the desperation of my impossible wish. She lets out a guttural, eager cry. A shiver runs the length of my spine. And suddenly, it overwhelms me.

And I realize, I am in love.

So, so in love.

I grab her hand and press it into my breast, right above my heart, so she can feel it’s wild beating.

I look at her. Level. Serious. Suddenly somber.

“If a marriage is the joining of two souls in the eyes of God and heaven, than are we not that? My soul is surely more bound to yours that it ever was to any mans.”
And I can see that she is overcome by it. Now I am the whale and she is Jonah. I am the flame and she the moth. I snake a hand up her back, my fingers clumsily finding the buttons and ties of her dress.

I catch a shadow crossing the field from the corner of my eye. I stop suddenly, hold still, still. Then I see it is a bird, shaking its small, dark feathered body in the sun. A slight sigh of relief leaves me and I say the words I have be imagining saying for all this time.

“So be my wife.”

And suddenly she is upon me like a hot wind and we are a tangle of limbs and lips and hair, desperate and searching, impatient with our dresses and our underthings.

Then we are both before each other, naked as the day we came, blinking and giggling, suddenly shy. Her eyes flick over me appreciatively and then I see her color deepen. She raises an eyebrow.

“In my secret, shameful moments, I’ve always wondered. Now, I know. Red, as well.”

Now I feel my own blush grow a deeper shade.

“You’ve had thoughts of----” I trail off, trusting I do not have to complete the thought.

“After our kiss---how could I not?”

And then I grab her wrist and pull her to me and then we are being slow with each other. Slow and careful. Gentle. Ministering to each other in a way I didn’t think possible.

And then we are no longer slow. No longer gentle. We are hungry. And hot. And moaning and grabbing. Rocking like the tide, sliding and bumping against each other. Face to face. Quim to quim. Dragging over each other. Again. Again and again. And it is exquisite. And then I can’t tell who is cursing and who is proclaiming “Don’t, you’ll make a mark”.

And both of us are breaking, breaking. Coming undone, unglued, unmoored. Holding onto each other like an anchor, weathering the waves.

And this.

This is finally enough.

Paradise.