And because love battles
not only in its burning agricultures
but also in the mouth of men and women,
I will finish off by taking the path away
to those who between my chest and your fragrance
want to interpose their obscure plant.
About me, nothing worse
they will tell you, my love,
than what I told you.
I lived in the prairies
before I got to know you
and I did not wait love but I was
laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose.
What more can they tell you?
I am neither good nor bad but a man,
and they will then associate the danger
of my life, which you know
and which with your passion you shared.
And good, this danger
is danger of love, of complete love
for all life,
for all lives,
and if this love brings us
the death and the prisons,
I am sure that your big eyes,
as when I kiss them,
will then close with pride,
into double pride, love,
with your pride and my pride.
But to my ears they will come before
to wear down the tour
of the sweet and hard love which binds us,
and they will say: "The one
you love,
is not a woman for you,
Why do you love her? I think
you could find one more beautiful,
more serious, more deep,
more other, you understand me, look how she's light,
and what a head she has,
and look at how she dresses,
and etcetera and etcetera".
And I in these lines say:
Like this I want you, love,
love, Like this I love you,
as you dress
and how your hair lifts up
and how your mouth smiles,
light as the water
of the spring upon the pure stones,
Like this I love you, beloved.
To bread I do not ask to teach me
but only not to lack during every day of life.
I don't know anything about light, from where
it comes nor where it goes,
I only want the light to light up,
I do not ask to the night
explanations,
I wait for it and it envelops me,
And so you, bread and light
And shadow are.
You came to my life
with what you were bringing,
made
of light and bread and shadow I expected you,
and Like this I need you,
Like this I love you,
and to those who want to hear tomorrow
that which I will not tell them, let them read it here,
and let them back off today because it is early
for these arguments.
Tomorrow we will only give them
a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf
which will fall on the earth
like if it had been made by our lips
like a kiss which falls
from our invincible heights
to show the fire and the tenderness
of a true love.
-Pablo Neruda "And Because Love Battles"
In my dream, I am awake. I am aware of the light coming in from the windows, and of the sound of the traffic, but my mind is still working the sleep from its corners, still dragging the dream through my slow realization of reality. Sensations stab through. Softness around my legs and shoulders. The rough rug against my foot. The smell of sweat and soap and something else. The sound of breathing, slowly. In and out, and then again. Skin on skin. Skin on skin.
My head rises and falls with his breath. My hand, splayed across his ribcage, expands and contracts with his lungs. We are rising and falling together, breathing together, being together. I breathe with him, determined not to break this moment, half praying he won't wake up, and wishing that he were already awake.
This is not what they call making love, I know, but this moment, this moment seems so very much more the definition of making love than anything else. This is more intimate, closer, less fiery, less intense, and yet somehow it is its very silence that overwhelms me. Skin on skin. We breathe together. We breathe together, skin on skin.
We didn't make it to my room last night. We didn't make it to the couch, either, though the blanket from my armchair is thrown over us. It seems unimaginable that this moment is not stolen from someone else's life, that his love for me is genuine, that it is not really his love for someone else. I want to believe that this is how I will always wake up, or, better, that this is how I'll always be. Just this, nothing else. If I get nothing else but this, I'll be happy. I promise.
He shifts in his sleep, just a little, as if he is aware that I'm here, even when he's unconscious. He doesn't talk in his sleep, and I find myself stupidly wishing that he did. I want to hear his voice, I want to hear him say my name, and tell me he loves me. He isn't dishonest. He wouldn't tell me he loves me and then take it back. And I know that he does love me. But I still want him to say it. A hundred times, over and over. Or just my name, over and over. Just that.
I would say that I've felt this way before, but I would be lying. I've loved, and strongly, but this fear, this new fear in me is something that I've never experienced before. I was never afraid of anything the first time, not with him near me. Now I know what it is to lose him and it stops my heart to think of the possibility of feeling that again. I love him too much to think of it, and too much to put it out of my mind. I lost him once, and it was my own fault. I can never be careless or blind again. I have to make sure that this feeling, this feeling never goes away. That is the gift I give myself, and that is the task I set myself.
His skin is soft, but underneath is hard. How completely incongruous. How completely against everything he is. His chest rises and falls, and I rise and fall with him.
Where does it come from, this fear? Why is it only now, when I am so happy, that I'm aware of the risk? I stroke his sternum with my fingertips. Skin on skin.
"Anne," he murmurs, tightening his arm around me. I raise my head a little, looking at his face for the first time. His eyes are open, just barely, and he's smiling at me with them. I smile back at him, and lean my head forward to kiss the first part of him I can reach—his shoulder.
"Ahmir." With a sudden turn, he slips out from under me, so that he is above me, and my back is pressed against the floor. We stare at each other for a moment.
"Good morning," he says, his voice slightly bewildered as if he is bemused by his inability to find anything else to say.
I stroke his face. "Good morning."
He kisses me suddenly, presses against me and kisses me soundly. I respond, although I'm so overwhelmed it's all I can do to keep up. When we part, he looks at me bleary-eyed, and crooks his mouth sideways in a grin, "Just think, I can do that whenever I want." I grin back at him, making as if to kiss him only to lick him sloppily on the cheek.
"And I can do that whenever I want," I say triumphantly.
"Oh, God, could you actually never do that again?" he asks, sitting up to wipe his cheek with his hand, smiling ruefully at me.
"Oh, but I lick now."
"You lick now."
"Yeah. It's new."
"Well, it has been a long time." He looks at me as I look at him. "A long time."
My breath catches behind the lump in my throat, and I turn my head, suddenly and terribly ashamed of my tears. I've barely cried in such a long time, why now? Why start crying when I'm happier than ever? Emotions are so strange.
"Anne, Anne, don't cry." He says, pulling me close to him, his chest against my back, his arms around me. "I'm sorry. Don't feel like you have to apologize. Please."
"But you just apologized." I retort, my voice only shaking a little.
"Well, I still have stuff to apologize for," he says, rubbing my hands in his. "You've already apologized. And I've made it my personal quest to punish you as much as possible. So you have nothing to feel guilty for." He rocks me back and forth gently, and we stay that way for some time. Fingers interlocked.
"Do you feel guilty?" I ask, staring down at our hands. He's watching them, too.
"Of course I do. I almost ruined everything. And Louisa could have been killed. You could have been killed. How could I not feel guilty?"
"You blame yourself for what happened to Louisa?"
"If I hadn't told her I wanted a stubborn woman, she wouldn't have jumped."
I turn to look at him, twisting around in his lap so I can see his face. "Don't flatter yourself, Ahmir. She would have jumped anyway." He looks at me quizzically, and I grin at him. "It's just who she was. Not that you being there wasn't good motivation for her, but then you'd have to apologize for your existence, and I don't want to hear any of that."
He regards me for a second, solemn and quiet. "I love you."
My heart aches. I can barely keep myself from crying again. "I love you." He pulls me into his arms again, my legs curled between his, which are raised, feet on the floor, knees bent. My ear is close to his chest, and when it's quiet I can hear his heart beating. Our hearts beat together.
"You could have died. You almost died." He says it softly, no more than a whisper. He rocks me gently from side to side, his hand in my hair, the memory of his fear in the tightness of his body. He speaks, as if echoing my thoughts: "I've never been more terrified in my life."
His fear is unbearable to me, and so I chuckle and say, "Never?" in knowing sort of way. He glances down at me, and I smile wickedly back at him.
"Well, almost never. Last night was…different?"
"Okay…?"
"Well, no one was drowning, so that's a difference right there. But it was almost worse, you know?"
"Yeah. I do. I love you."
His arms tighten around me. "I love you."
"I get to say that whenever I want."
"It's fun, isn't it?"
We have a lot to talk about. Despite what he says, I feel the need to apologize, to clear up every last misunderstanding, to dissect every minute, to make it clear that I am with him. I am his and he is mine. I want him to know it. And despite what I say, I know he feels the need to make sure that I know how much he loves me, that I understand each word he ever said to me.
At the same time, I don't want to talk. I'm tired of talking. I want to look, and look, and look and touch and revel in the fact that we are together again. Revel in the fact that he loves me and I love him. And in the fact that nothing else matters. He is mine, and I am his. We are breathing together. We are being together. We are together.
"Just tell me this," he says quietly, in my ear, as his fingertips trace my collarbone, just touching, just ever so slightly. "If I had come back sooner…if we'd met again sooner, say two years after we broke up, would you have wanted me then? Would you have come back to me, if I had come back to you?"
"Of course. Of course I would have."
"Of course," he's silent for a long time. "I almost came back, you know. I was this close to coming back and, I don't know, doing whatever it took to convince you to be with me."
My breath catches. "Why didn't you?" I draw concentric circles on his knee.
"Because I'm stupid, that's why. And because I wanted to make you suffer. And because I loved you too much to risk it. But I should have risked it. I could have saved us both years. Anne," he murmurs, only just audibly.
"Yes?" I whisper back.
"Stay with me."
There's no response for that, besides turning around and kissing him. Wrapping my arms around him, and pulling him closer, closer, so that he can see how impossible it is that I would ever leave him. How inseparable we are now, now at last, the way it should always have been.
Because even through all the fear, all the self-doubt, the loathing of the past, what shines the brightest is our triumph. We are here, we are together. I can't keep the smile off of my face, can't keep joy from lighting up every part of me. It's unending, this happiness, it's impossible to contain. I don't even try. I love this man, and this man loves me, and that victory leaves no room in my lungs for air, no space in my head for thought, no time for my heart to beat. I will wake up every day next to him, I will hear his voice every day, and each day will be happier and better than the one before it. I know who I am, and he knows who he is, and here we are. I want to sing, I want to dance, I want to walk down the street hand-in-hand for all the world to notice us and understand what we are. I am so happy. Can a person be this happy?
Soon, too soon, we get up. Our nakedness under the blanket suddenly becomes awkward, and I find some clothes for us to throw on. Me his shirt, him his pants. He makes scrambled eggs and toast, and I make coffee, and we sit across the tiny table from each other, feet touching, hands touching, and we don't say a word. There's so much to say. There's nothing to say.
It's morning. This is where the day begins.
The End
*Next chapter will be an author's note.