Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"oh, you are in my blood like holy wine"
jennings farm moans. we sit in silence. it's more than i could ask for, more than i thought you would give me as you rip dead leaves between your fingers.
"robert," a doggish whine slipped from my tongue.
i could leave and try to forget all this. i could give you back the sun and find another man to be my husband. the grass of the english countryside feels dry under my palms. your dog, strider, sniffs at a dead frog. you stare.
"do you love me?"
i don't have to look at you to know your eyes are focused elsewhere, on the sky, the earth. and i shut my own to imagine i am one of your road conquests and how it must feel to be your chosen taste for a night. how easily you can come back and be country boy again. they know nothing.
"i do . . ." your hesitation is enough.
you crumple your fist into the weeds beneath us.
my lips drag. "i won't marry an unfaithful man."
"i know."
strider bounds back. he is open-mouthed and smiling. do you remember the picture john paul took of me, my arms wrapped around the collie's neck?
he licks your fingers. i can hear your sigh: the end of your realization. that's what causes me to stand, to feel the prickling in my calves.
you stay. a bareness tears between us. strider curls and settles in the v of your open legs, looking at me, panting at me. i think he knows too.
the heave and slope of your breath-caught shoulders almost gets me, but i turn my back. we have our love letters, the piano and guitar, the late nights when you kept me awake with your voice, and ursa major and minor.
a storm cloud rolls over the sun. my knuckles itch at the sight of it.
in the house, i have my clothes and things, packed and ready. that, i know, is enough.
