“Have you found another book?” he asked to Anna.
She sought to read one then, but it didn’t speak. It didn’t touch, hold her attention, nor draw spirit and mind richly into.
The story wasn’t hers.
She lain on the sofa, body reposed, long of her torso to cushioned rest, cant of her head on pillow to armrest’s end; bend of her legs, right’s knee high and foot to cushion, left’s raise and settle to knee of right, hue of her painted toes in show at ends of her open feet.
“I haven’t,” she answered, soft despondence in her tone as she put the story down and gave up on what cannot be forced or made by effort but is only found, which adds to enjoyment of gift and pleasure whenever experience of story is so.
He observed her then, all he could see and what he could not: expression in lips, expression in eyes, body’s posture in her lie, hue of her toes, tone of her skin, freckled pattern over all that showed; light blue of her shirt, white of her shorts, the book she did not read, and more she didn’t say, he couldn’t see, but knew that it was there.
It was Thursday and both dreamed to be away; somewhere away, if not afar, from the city and its small; its closing in and limits to sky when they desired vastness of it and views and selves in openness as same of place.
“Why don’t we go away?” he asked. “Why don’t we leave in the morning and go again to be alone and away. Rather than search for ourselves in others’ words, lets make our own stories. Lets choose our own words, tell and write as we want told. Let’s live our love.
I want to build a fire, for the light if not the heat, and to be with you in its flicker and dance and enchantment and changing to all in its touch. I want to hold you underneath the stars, under waning of the moon; and when dawn is beginning and we and earth are under mist and it catches silver in first-sun—to love you in all. I want to walk in the pastures, morning dew wetting our legs and our clothes that, to feel skin dry when returned indoors and we strip ourselves of the cool, fire then for warmth and dryness of its heat; to return outdoors in the high of sun and feel how the world is changed; to hold your hand as we walk in the trees, love everywhere that we’re inspired.
Let’s write the stories that are ours—already and still to be. Let’s trade them back and forth, written in our own hands; read the other’s eyes as they read our page, and smile when we see the change.
Why don’t we get away, stop searching, and live and write what we know is ours?”
He longed to be away again, with her, in the golden woods at evening shade where realities seemed dream.