Chapter 48: Interlude#3: Approaching the Seam
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I should have been asleep. Long after Sasha's breaths lengthened and regulated to the slow rhythms of sleep, I laid awake.
I had not allowed him to speak. When I lead him from the living room, I did so silently. My room was darkened, but still dominated in the half light by the bed. I had pulled back the covers and waited, standing silhouetted by the ambient city night.
He seemed to understand my need for actions rather than words, for he came to me with none. We simply touched, and felt. With clothing a long memory, we made love wordlessly, with an intimacy that was shocking. We were one. I had thought that the part of me that was Sasha and the part of him that was me was gone forever. It was an emotional jolt, pleasant far beyond the heights of physical sensation which his love making evoked.
It was the oneness which made me weep. He had tried to ask what was wrong, but I kissed him for the simple expediency of silence. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to let go of the feeling. I simply wanted to hold him. Bathed in the afterglow of our love, he fell asleep, still clinging to me.
I stroked his hair and what I could reach of his back and considered his face, so fine and smooth in sleep. This was the face of love, and I realized, the face which I wanted to greet every morning for the rest of my days. And finally, the face which would leave my sight soon, who knew for how long.
The parting was coming, inexorably. I knew that I could not stop it. That feeling of helplessness pushed me along afore it. I did not know if I could bear what was coming, to be alone, apart from Sasha. I didn't know how to do anything but to bear it.
So it was as I considered him, that Yelena came home and instead of sleeping in her own bed, went into the master suite and was quiet. Yelena's arrival had precipitated a thought of another nature. Another face, one that I loved as much as Sasha beside me, with slanted good looks and another kind of oneness, a unison as great, as important and as overwhelming. That love could also bring me to tears, but I had no tears left to cry for it.
I laid silently, awake in the night.
Text Copyright © 1998-2003 Mary E. Tyler
