SOLOMON
Her eyes are open before the alarm goes off: again. She's rolled over into a cold spot, where she kicked the covers off last night. Every morning she wakes up freezing, and a little more alone, and the dreams that were a comfort in the dark, fall away into the cold dawn.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
The image of his eyes, his lips, fade and fray at the edges as daylight taunts her with reality, and what is left of him, her husband recedes, back into the world where she can't follow him.
Draw me, we will run after thee
Claire is awake; Amelia hears her daughter moving around in the kitchen. She's been a steady, silent, faithful presence since her father was torn out of her life for the second time. She's been a surprising well of strength, that she shouldn't have to be; is too young to be.
Amelia closes her eyes.
A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.
She tries to remember what it was to hear the swell and fall of her husband's breath, the way she did once, when she lay in the dark.
Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair
Sometimes, it helps to imagine him on their wedding day. More than a decade ago, these pictures in her mind are still some of the sharpest. Walking down that long aisle, she'd been trembling with a thousand different feelings, but her groom was calm and even. He looked into her so serenely, she swore he could see their marriage before him like a road map, or a chart a steady course he would navigate come hell or high water. And the figurative flame, and the figurative flood did come, and they'd barely begun to be husband and wife it seemed.
Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.
She opens her eyes. She heaves herself out of bed and into another day. She does it for her daughter. She does it for what is left of her family.
The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir.