Golden Bliss

When Love Only Leads To Dalliances

It was golden hour, laying atop the soft lawn, one hand behind my head, the other brushing back strands of her dark hair rustling in the wind, her head lay firmly on my chest. Each inhale brought her inexorably closer to me, each successive exhale felt like separating from a part of myself I had never known. I wondered if she felt my rhythm reverberating within her, rippling across her tender flesh, vibrating down each vertebrae, kneading through her body like warm, living light.

The sky was a softened sapphire, with white whisky wisps like elongated brushstrokes across it, and the autumn light glowed with a deeper orange, catching the restless dust, wrapping us within its warm embrace. There was honey in the light, thick and golden, poured across the lawn in glistening sheets. The shadows beneath the trees were sultry and shifting, like the silhouettes of old lovers playing hide and seek. Far above, the Campanile chimed with a low, firm, booming tone, a solemn reminder our time together was fleeting.

There was a renewed crispness in the air, as the brisk cool breeze brought the taste of eucalyptus and sea salt across the campus, sweeping all our worries away.

The humble hymns of distant voices, feathery footsteps, and wind threading through unyielding structures wove together a soundscape that carried me back to the cavernous silence of the lockdowns.

I could feel the cold, damp grass permeating our blanket, a grounding chill that countered the warmth cascading over us, soaking slowly into our clothes and anchoring our bodies to the earth.

I felt her finger brush the tip of my nose in a breathlight stroke, drifting down the line of my whiskers until her touch slipped into the inner fold of my crescenting lips.

Upon first glance, through narrowed vision, I beheld a wavering aura framing a visage that slowly came into focus, obsidian eyes gleaming like wet volcanic glass, porcelain skin unblemished as untouched moonstone, and a lush smile unfurling with the slow and steady seduction of a lunar tide determined to draw me in.

Something crept across my arm, a lonely interloper seeking, a solitary ant stopped and seemed to stare at me; in that instance, my impulse to strike softened, pacified into empathy. I let it continue on its way, feeling its faint footsteps fade from my skin.

I wondered if Oppenheimer sat on this same grass, staring up at the same serene canvas and dreamed of sunflowers blooming into mushroom clouds across the expanse, ushering eternal nightfall.

Her fingers interlaced through mine with the care of threads passing through latticework, and when our hands finally locked, her touch rested in my palm like a fragile constellation of sand, something I had to cradle with precise equilibrium, balancing a mindful, measured hold, firm enough not to lose it, gentle enough not to suffocate what is precious.

Try as I might, nothing remained sacred in our private world. A disruptive intruder wedged between us, part oracle, part parasite, offering her infinite portals to everywhere but here. With each beckoning call, it disturbed the delicate weave of our closeness, until even our intimacy had to compete with its insatiable need for attention.

She had been forthright from the beginning, confessed that what we shared was only a beautiful dalliance, a daydream carved out of her real life, something she would soon abandon when she returned East to the future she’d been promised. We were desire, not destiny. Yet I couldn’t help wondering whether love could took root in illusions, or if it would collapse like sand washing away under a rising, merciless tide.

I remained vigilant, guarded, against my very nature. We swore we wouldn’t grow too close, wouldn’t weave silk threads between us, but every moment I yearned to pull another thread tight. I hungered for her quiet, devastating beauty: her immaculate pale skin, her effortless elegance, her luxurious long black locks, her neutral cashmere layers soft as buttermilk cream. Her aroma woven from white flower, bergamot essence, black tea and musk would haunt me forever. I longed to discover what lay behind her lingering glances, behind those playful giggles that burst forth like champagne bubbles. I wanted to remain, endlessly, in the heart of her intoxicating gaze.

With the warm weight of her head nestled into my chest, I pondered: Who was I to her? Who would I be in the story of her life?In the decades ahead, as life ripened and reshaped her, would a fragment of me still linger in her thoughts? And if history ever turned cruel, if our homelands stood on opposite sides of war, would her heart still reach for me?

Part of me wished to resist, to claim my desires, and the other recoiled, frightened from the scars of having chased something seemingly incompatible before.

I let my eyes fall shut, let my mind settle, and returned to the harmony of the moment in the meadow, and to that golden bliss.

Inspired by the poem Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow (see Appendix).

Thank you for reading.

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Appendix

Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
by Robert Duncan

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein

that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am
I say are likenesses of the First Beloved
whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.

She it is Queen Under The Hill
whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words
that is a field folded.

It is only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the source of the sun
in an hour before the sun’s going down

whose secret we see in a children’s game
of ring a round of roses told.

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos,

that is a place of first permission,
everlasting omen of what is.