Dead Flowers | H.S.

Chapter Eighteen

poem by Pablo Neruda.
- -

The last notes of summer sweetly sang to the river as she coursed past us, lovingly caressing our nakedness beneath her surface. Harry held the book of poetry he had been reading as of late above the water. His lips moved and curved and spread as he read the literature aloud, filling my heart with honey.

The sun was just beginning to rise above us and behind the clouds. I stood with my feet firmly in the mud and my chin tilted towards the sky. My eyes were closed and my hair was down and long, very long.

"When I die I want your hands on my eyes: I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me one more time to feel the smoothness that changed my destiny."

"Tell me again," I whispered to Harry in the chilly Columbia River, "tell me again about the house we are going to have."

"One day, when you're older and I'm wiser, we're going to have a house that sits on the beach in Portland. We're going to spend our days rowing through the ocean and picnicking in our own backyard. We're going to make love every day and watch the sunset and then start all over again. Maybe one day we can have children, too, and then we can teach them what sea turtles are and how to build sandcastles just close enough to the water so that they'll stick, but not roll away with the tide," Harry whispered into my hair, "and one day, when I am wiser and you are older, we are going to live happily among the nature surrounding us. Tranquil."

-

I gauged the length of our relationship by kisses, by nights spent lying on my bed, by the tongue circling my cunt. We had been together only a short while, a whole summer, but as the seasons changed and the first few notes of fall began, we encompassed the strong root of trust and flourished. We swam everyday, bathed in the hot sun, covered our faces with hats and picked flowers at the farmer's market, slept in open fields, made love in the backseat of Harry's convertible, pressed flowers, chased vodka with lemonade, sucked on strawberries, stained lips with blueberries, opened all the windows in the house, danced to low music, climbed hills just to roll down them, swam in puddles, painted each other, braided each other's hair, whispered under the full moon, cried hot salt. Summer was over, but Harry and I were not.

"Summer's going to last forever," I whispered into Harry's neck. He pressed down onto me and we were two sticky bodies in a field of wildflowers.

We were naked as we came, one with nature, one with the way things were, one with the way things were meant to be. I thought of Adam and Eve and their carelessness before the forbidden fruit had been bitten. This is it, I thought, this must be the place.

"Summer's almost over. It's nearly the end of September."

I held a honey suckle to Harry's lips and he sucked the sweet, floral nectar and then chewed on the petal.

-

"Dry me," Harry whispered.

He was soaked to the bone, having climbed through my window in the midst of an autumn storm. His hair had grown out and now hung over his eyes, dropping beads over his eyebrows.

Silently, with my mother's hand washed and initialed towel, I started at his head and tussled his hair softly. Harry groaned. I moved down over his face and wiped his eyes, his cheeks, his lips. Then his neck, his collarbone. I stopped; took his shirt off. Then I toweled off his naked torso, so covered in ink and water that I could hardly tell their shadows apart. Then I dropped to my knees, looked at him through my lashes, unbuckled his belt.