Geminis
A desperate, lucid romantic explores her misunderstood love for another, one sacred night.
Formerly published in & magazine volume 17.
It was a rare gift to hold in my hands the heat of his and feel that within our shared grip there was blood that ran beyond the known and into the spacious dark. Alone on the roof with the hunter’s belt the only anchor in the deep, we had a strange, whistling dread in our veins. Down below a dark orange lamp glared at the slick street, and we in our fears labored to stay still and listen for threatening tires in pursuit. It had never come before. Its absence couldn’t flush flutters from our hearts.
We laid together and fell into the expanse, beyond the foggy glow of civilized light, the elated revels, where time sleepwalked in an oneiric daze. Here there were rows of darkened houses, open windows, porch lights, and the thin glow of streetlamps. Above the clouds drifted, dark purple and deflated, painted across the sky with a stranger’s hand that had held no brush or held one all its life. Formless and intractable, dragging us in their precession while we waited on this night, on our night.
We whispered. Our words were lutestring melodies, and in the space between the night granted missing harmonies. The porch swing sang; the ground crickets pulled their rosin bows. The fluttering leaves of the palms were stirred by wind from the glassy lake. All in tune, in pianissimo, perfectly blended, and total. Then the lethargic roll of rubber on the asphalt. A few shallow breaths. A dread like darkness in the throat. The slick of the tire slithering into the black, and then all was quiet, all was safe.
We faced each other then, and his hand drew up to my face and held it. My dear. My sweet. That was all he could manage. His poor failing words. His long fingers on my cheek, those treasured hands playing the Steinway, caressing, lithe and lingering. The warmth of my own body in the warmth of the night against the warmth of his hands. My hand on his cheek. My dear. My sweet. My own words failing.
In a season before memory we were on a high hill. Junebugs screeched somewhere in the grass like the tiny winding of a battery. The wind blowing against the back of my knees, a thin stream, like the curling of fingers in a final farewell. He was smiling then. The moon was in his eyes. How could I have known that what it felt like then would be the same now—that the same brilliant pinpricks of white in the night would shine unerringly whether we fought or loved or cried? If a handful of Chronos’s sand were in my grasp, I would return and see him as I remembered. He was smiling then, in a season beyond memory, and it never left me.
On one of those nights he passed me three bracelets. A reminder, he said, of the great hunter who was always watching, club always raised. His distraction would not last forever, so we had to make these moments last. Our hands together. And now and then and tomorrow joined there even when apart, when alone. The bracelets jingle against my wrists. Tires roll across the street. The obstinate clouds, my sensitive skin.
Is it too much to ask for time to return to me? Now that I finally have understanding, why am I cursed with memory? I hear dewdrops fall from bay leaves in the crisp and gleaming morn. By daylight, sparkles of a thoughtless life. Then at night he is there and he lingers in my mind—dark, meditating, assuring. Our frail spirits are frayed by the space shoved between. These nights allow for the briefest splice, a time where we can be whole, and then that splice turns to memory. The fray remains. The rope thins, worn, but unbroken. This little thread is my lifeline, my former Propus—my forgotten tether.
The shackles jingle against my wrists. Tonight they will come undone, but only for a time. Then we will be bound again, but only for a time. We against the hunter’s unfailing eye. He is there in all corners of the world, in every face and feature, behind every mouth, hidden beneath the reassurances of friends—a relentless bloodhound that never lets us be. We made our peace. We whispered our vows and held on until the long journey would bring us again to our hill hidden in the trees. Soon that hill will be gone. Fugitives cannot outrun an infinite captor, within space or without, whether myriad faces or three damning glints in the inky night.
He took my hand and pointed. The clouds had drifted. The sky was clearing. The hunter was now hidden by the clouds, the brushed tails trailing along. I closed my eyes. I listened to the harmony and felt his hands and saw nothing and heard his breathing. He was waiting. I waited. There was no time in all the world save for the heartbeats in our palms. I could feel him stir and stare and I opened my eyes and let the sky take away my spirit.
There we were in the black together, in eternity, in flight—his hand in mine, our hands intertwined, running into the formless forever. Alone in the terrible emptiness. Our stars twinkled, two burning giants, resolute and noble. Hidden by day, delighting by the dark of the sleeping moon. We stood and gazed together and whispered the words we reserved only for each other. He reached for me, and I for him, and we marveled at ourselves, and in his hands he turned mine, his thick knuckles, his thin gnarled veins like twine, handling the softest things in the world like mother-of-pearl—my star-studded wrists, those little dancing ringlets, with his fingers in mine, with a touch like the kiss of a breeze, and his kiss was softer than space, warmer than the stars, tender, and beloved.
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I like some of these sentences a lot, and the through-line hands imagery worked well. An emotionally effective peace.