We sit before the picture window, robed, eyes full of sleep. The house is empty of sound. A warmness in dawn, of the silent view before us growing. Two cardinals flit, as if for us, a private ballet. We don’t talk. There is no need. Her hand reaches for mine. She smiles, takes a sip of coffee, her eyes over the rim looking at me in the way of eyes emerging from still water. It is quiet like that and I can tell from the tilt of her head, the squint of her looking, the grasp of her fingers, all is right. And the day looks brighter.
Later, we walk to the lake to take in a final view. Not so much to look as to breath, to know the air of fawn and fauna. Flowers everywhere, open, shamelessly exposed. Each breath full of this flora, infusing lungs and memory. Tomorrow we leave, replacing the blue sky for inky darkness, the soft earth under our feet for cold metal. It is as if we are leaving life. Even gravity seems reluctant.
Again she takes my hand. Holding tighter this time and I know this turning of page, this closing of chapter. She knows too. The unknown of space before us made more acute by the lack of space between us. We have, as two roots, grown together, unseen to others but by evidence of bough and branch, a shine as wind in our leaves. We glitter. Catching light in a thousand ways, fragments of moments seen mostly by contrast.
The sun rises above the trees now and the lake shimmers away the last wisps of mauvish mallow. Everywhere, as not before, gentle sound. She closes her eyes. Breaths deep. And I watch her lean her head into the warmth of day. Her hand still holds mine. Her fingers moist in our heat. We mix this way such that what is hers and what is mine seems the wrong question just as mother and child to be are both two and one at the same time. I kiss her cheek. She smiles without opening her eyes.
Neither of us wants to leave this place of birth, of root so firmly grown. The fear of the gardener. Of transplanting. Will it take? Are we more than this place of tranquility?
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