Heloise Holds the Sun ✓

39. a love that spills over

"The soul is not in the body; the body is in the soul." – Hildegard of Bingen*

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"Abelard," I stand up one night, as I grow exhausted from our writings that have taken us well into the dark hours of the morning. He is still sitting, hunched over the edge of the desk. His eyes are intensely focused – possessed, even. I love watching his brain spin.

I take his hand, sliding the pen out of it. I hold his palm against mine, and he raises his eyes to me in confusion.

I do not move: I am unwavering in this. I do not say anything as I lead him up to standing. Our eyes do not break their heavy line of contact, and I know he is reading what I wish they would speak.

"Heloise, don't..."

But his heart, screaming out his eyes, betrays his protestations. I raise his hand, still in my palm, to my lips. "I love you, Abelard."

"I cannot love you as I used to."

I shake my head, and smile sadly. A smile feels odd on my lips – it takes more effort to pull the corners of my lips up from their hardened lines than it used to take. "I do not want anything from you but you," I say, a near whisper, and bring his palm to rest on my cheek.

He does not remove it.

"I will love you forever, Abelard. Until death and then beyond it. Do you not trust me?"

His breath is shaky, and his eyes are darting back and forth between mine.

"Come," I am pulling him gently behind me, surprising myself with my boldness. "Stay with me until sunrise..." and we find ourselves sitting at the edge of the bed. His hands are in mine, and I am smiling down at the sight of them. I am happy – so happy.

I reach up to remove my veil. His chest is heaving – it's an entire storm of emotion rising in him. Guilt and passion in equal measure. The soft fabric falls behind me on the bed, and my long, red locks fall to frame my face. It has been so, so long since anyone has seen me – the real me. Heloise. Not Abbess. Just Heloise.

He is shaking his head, slowly, almost imperceptibly, but his eyes are set on watching me... On watching me as I peel back the clasps of my robes, revealing my bare shoulders; watching me as the rest of my robes fall in pieces, lying behind us like satin carcasses on the bed. I feel free – so free. I am standing before him now, bringing him up to meet me.

"It's okay," I whisper, and tears are framing his eyes – those beautiful eyes, those eyes that have sealed my fate, and have ruined my life and exalted it all at once. "It's okay."

"Heloise," he finds his voice. It is coarse, it is unsure. His breaths are so heavy, so burdened with the weight of his guilt, I can feel them reach down to his toes. "God will punish..."

I simply shake my head, a smile stretched on my face that extends before and beyond this moment. I feel, at once, the weight of all the truths I have come to realize. I feel the rightness, sure and strong, I have always known in my bones: I was meant to love Abelard. I knew it as a girl, and I'll know it until I am ash. "God is with us now. He smiles on us. We have no sin to atone for, my love," I swipe a fallen lock of hair behind his ear, looking up earnestly into his dampened eyes, "none of us do. God loves us simply, and unconditionally, because we are His."

His lips are quivering, and I do not know how it has happened, but he is against me, under the warm caress of our sheets. He is disrobed. We lie there, skin against skin, clutching at each other – clutching at each other from some starved claws deep in our souls. I hold him against me, as sobs overtake him. He is moving his hand along my body, feeling – as I am – the home in each other that we have strayed so many years from. The warm relief floods us. We are home.

"It's okay," I am kissing his forehead as he deflates against my shoulder, his sobs muffled against my neck. "It's okay."

"I am so sorry," he says, his arms wrapping around my back to clutch me closer into him.

His skin against mine... it is the most beautiful thing on this earth. More beautiful than the gold of the icons. More beautiful than all the poems and all the hymns. And I wish I could stand like this before the altar – I wish I could clutch him like this in prayer – I wish I could kiss him before the clergy and all its hypocrites and scream: see? In loving, we know God best. Divine light breathes now through all my pores. Can you see it: can you see how the sun now shines from my eyes?

And I know that this is how Adam and Eve felt. This is how they truly felt – on the honest canvas behind the shame and temptation we've painted their fate over in since. It was just this. It is the sincerest pain, to be forced to live apart from the one in which you knew home... The one who makes you turn toward Heaven in earnest, with a heart filled to the very brim with love, a love that pours out and spills over into all of God's beautiful creation... the one who inspires in you a love that cannot be contained. Whatever inspires this love cannot be anything but holy.

And my heart has swollen too big for my body. I pull him closer to me but there is no such thing as close enough.

"Don't worry, we have the rest of our lives together now."

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*Saint Hildegard was another 12th century abbess who had mystic visions of being outside of time and place. She felt she was inspired directly by the Holy Spirit whenever she wrote text or composed music. She is important to me here as a juxtaposition because her writings were closer to the spirit of faith than all the doctrine of the church around her.