700. waking up

She woke by morning light where white sheets looked gray and the only sound that could be heard was his gentle steady breathing. She ran her fingers through his wavy hair without waking him, his face childlike in slumber, a postcoital peace, the charge of heat releasing, it seemed, even subconscious stress, a release like diving, of those moments of flight, falling in adrenaline, every pore alive, sentient, electrified. And then the water, the embrace. The parting of ocean, consumed in the cool sea for what was masculine above is feminine below and where the waves might whip in anger and slap the wind, below was quiet, peaceful, embracing, embryonic.

She pulled the sheets to his knees and his skin looked like a placid lake in the gossamer light. He was young she thought, younger than she was and his body held youth in his muscles, even in slumber not a wrinkle, skin glove tight over muscle, a fluidness of flesh, even now as before when his mechanics were not mechanical, he moved not with starts and stops, his brow showed not the effort of trying but he was as the wave to the ocean, rising and known but not separate, not something other and as she looked upon his body, so peaceful, she wondered how he did it, how he was able, so young, to move without stutter, to move not as him and her, not as one upon the other, not even as hand reaching for hand. He moved with the grace of a dolphin and she was sea. Again and again he rose. Again and again he glistened in air, leaping and then plunging again, a joy without ends as if joy itself were the only object, as if joy were a circle with no beginning or end, as if he were able to bring her into that circle and what was him and what was her was as indistinguishable as the wave that slips back into the ocean, rising again and falling, known without separation, where no dividing line could be known between where ocean ended and wave began.

She looked upon his maleness, shape, contour, texture and in this state of repose, where she was able to look without observation, without touching, she thought it the most beautiful thing she had ever seen without any sure grasp on why or how, as if beauty was self-evident, beyond logic or reason or explanation, discourse or debate. She closed her eyes and bent her head and drew breath as one draws upon a flower. And as she breathed him, as his scent entered her nose, her body, it also entered her mind, that this was him, this sweet, salty, musky maleness was him and in the inhaling, as if consuming what could not be seen, he was now in her, in her mind, memory, senses, a signature it seemed, and it occurred to her in this dawning light, before he had awakened, his hair wavy with sleep, his nipples erect in the cold, his torso statue tight, that he was a part of her now, in some way, just this morning, just these moments of looking, of smelling, in some way he had not been before, as if another layer of him now existed, another depth that was hers and hers alone, stored away in what he would only ever know as the smile he saw when she kissed him awake.