Delicate

“We might make love in some sacred place

The look on your face is delicate.”

—From “Delicate” by Damien Rice

The storm had waned in the morning and left its marks on wrecked spider webs—the webs the old trees had welcomed like the nests the birds had built to nurse their hatchlings. A spider appeared from a tree hollow. It crawled through a twig hanging five feet above the ground and started weaving a new web. A skylark came to rest on a higher stalk as if to spy on the spider as the wind played a symphony of waves on the leaves surrounding them, making the stones colder as cold, wet boughs showering globules of water onto the ground which was almost drying with the kiss of the light from the already shining sun that was about to bid goodbye in an hour or so.

The sundry trees had also welcomed the couple for this spot to be their Eden. There was comfort in here. The question why the woman felt safe was confusing—was it because of the familiar place or the even more familiar arms of the man she was clutching now as they walked on the wet grass? They had come here not to hunt like Adam and Eve. They didn’t intend to make another memory. They might even be looking for nepenthe. But what they’d found were severed pine cones and the fluffy heads of dandelions. They were meant to remember…

He could still remember the dream he had a long time ago, about six months after he met her the first time. In that dream he wakes up early in the morning, finding her still sleeping beside him. I rise and make breakfast for us. I kiss you in the forehead. You are still fast asleep—body draped in sheets, face covered with smiles. I go to the balcony and read a book. After a while you appear and kiss me, take a sip from your cup and we just sit there, doing our own things, knowing that there’s no need for us to talk to break the silence. We feel so much love in that home we’ve always dreamt of.

They were young then and this place had been their playground and wishing well. Now they grew up just to be children again. Not to play but to look at the paintings of memories that used to be real. The man wondered if he could alter reality and restore what they had had through dreams, memories, writing, believing. Perhaps it was through believing.

She remembered the night he visited her this far north on her birthday. It was probably ten degrees cold. He lent me his jacket and held me in his arms as we walked through the lights lingering from the windows of cafés and shops we had visited during the day. It was the warmest feeling he’d ever had. He didn’t feel cold at all. It was the first time he believed in the warmth of selfless love. And she wondered if there was a patron saint of memories; she would pray in the deepest core of her cerebrum. If love was all about memories made, I would buy memories in a candy wrapper. Memories that shaped our clouds. How happiness can be surreal yet pain can be so real.

Fallen leaves whirled up and around as they walked past the trees. A drizzle cut across and soaked their clothes. How they both loved the rain. She halted for a moment and spread out her hands. She danced to the tune of the splatter of fine drops of water upon the leaves. It was the first time he saw her dance. She never looked this lovely. Her skirt blossomed like petals of a flower as she twirled. Her eyes projected the landscape like a reel. Her eyelashes accentuated the beauty of the pines waving hello then goodbye in milliseconds. She had changed. She looked older. She had gained twenty pounds or so and slabs of fat, probably on account of childbearing, were evident just below her bosom down to the waist. But for him she was still his Clandestine. His lovely Clandestine. His imago. A butterfly passed by, stealing his eyes for a moment. He had always wondered, as a child, if he could make elephants fly like if he could make a love like theirs last forever. And he looked back at her, thinking. If all these were not ours, I’d be in hell.

As soon as she stopped dancing, he moved towards her and kissed her hands. He kissed the ring around her ring finger and, as the smell of her breath deliberately sank into his senses, he whispered something in her ear. She felt the cold, painful, sweet breeze touching her inside. They never sang the songs they played on their minds but they heard the same things—the skylark singing hallelujah, the soft vibration of the wind ostensibly assuring them that the trees wouldn’t tell a soul as their cavities watched his gentle embrace in their sacred ground. She felt him. She realized that he hadn’t changed at all. He remained slim. He actually looked younger than the last time she saw him three years ago. He never liked his body but the woman held it the way she held her own child. Years ago they had lost their horizon. If it had come back she wouldn’t let herself lose it again. She held him in this borrowed moment, in this place only the two of them knew. She held him as if she could never bear the time they would have to part ways once more. His thoughts traveled back to the day they were looking for dandelions in this same spot. Now it was like they were picking up dandelions in a cemetery. He couldn’t stand it. He wished to be a smoke of air then vanish.

She saw his troubled face and suddenly memories of that frown whenever he got upset flashed into her mind and tickled her throat and cheeks that generated mirth. Her laughter pierced him. How he loved the sound of it. How he closed his eyes to hear her voice like music. She held his hand, held his soft, nacreous hands. He never liked them, but she held them and she loved them. She had always loved that he owned those fragile hands. She pulled him and they lay on the grass. The petrichor never smelled so ambrosial yet so stinging. The damp soil stained her white sweater but she didn’t let it bother her. He moved his hands under her shoulder and laid her head on his chest. A plane cut across the sky. She felt scared. She moved her face to his shoulder, smelled him and seemingly wandered along the arch that bridged the lands of forgetfulness and nostalgia. He felt his shoulders wet with tears. He stroked her hair the way he did a long time ago. Each strand reminded him of the days they had spent together. Likewise, it reminded him of the days he'd spent in sorrow. How he'd managed to live all these years, he didn’t know. He closed his eyes; closed them the way he had done so when he had lain on the sand in the days of three Decembers without her, and just saw the shadows of clouds pass by in the back of his eyelids.

As the sun crouched to give way to the infinitesimal stars to illuminate the navy blue evening sky, he felt her lips navigating his face. Her lips were a compass, recalling every angle, tracing the lines that marked the years of each other's absence. He gently moved his body to cave in her hands that caressed his neck. He kissed her mouth and felt their tongues play the old song like the flame of a dust-covered candle burning its antiquity as if for the last time. She spread her legs and let his groin cling to hers. He could feel the wetness between her thighs, so warm, so maddeningly sweet. He put his hands inside her skirt and pulled the fabric that curtained the threshold of her very soul. She pulled him up a bit and removed his shirt then, his pants, feeling afresh the flesh and spirit as the trees remained silent to the push and pull of ecstasy steaming from the bodies rolling in the ground.

They were like in a film played in slow motion but time seemed to pass very quickly. A firefly began fluttering like a freckle to light their faces, flushing the frost off their feet. The skylark remained watching the spider move its legs like fingers on a piano striking the right keys of passion’s harmony by switching the melody of melancholia to the fugue of bliss. And they reigned over each others’ brain—king and queen.

They had had each other then. They had each other now... in this stolen moment. When they finished making love, they lay for awhile with a lot of thoughts on their minds which they refused to talk about. In about half an hour they would have to get up and walk. Besides the stars and the firefly, a solitary lamppost would light their way. There would be strange shadows behind them like the billions of people around the world—one of them for the other to love, the fundamental kind, and the rest are mere shadows. And as the crescent curved across an empty road unraveling things that were flowering too late, he would have to tell her the words: “I’m getting married tomorrow.”

The spider had finished spinning its abode between the twigs. It wouldn’t take long for the new web to be ruined by another storm and both the spider and the skylark would find the horizon of their essence entangled and, as some eclipses end in ellipses, somewhere between the hands of the clock, they would find their own time again and perhaps create another memory.