Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [91]
“How we loved,
laid in one bed,
while night ran through us
like swift water, sped
onto the teeth of the dawn:
I must let go,
go on.
My side aches.
The bow has shot its
arrow and the twine
breaks.”
In the dark another heard and began pushing the song through the bell of a trumpet. The brassy honey and vinegar seeped through her. Her hand clasped Bee’s hand harder. He squeezed her hand back and then dropped it, and she felt ashamed until his arm came around her, pulling her closer to him as they strolled still more slowly, her hip bumping his thigh. She could not speak, her flesh heavy and sweet on her bones. She felt swollen equally with old tears and present wanting, the memory of Claud and the presence of Bee. Who was not Claud. But who made her remember. Whose big hand on her waist, the thumb just touching her breast through the flimsy that parted for his thumb hot and fat, asking her and getting an answer as her knees half buckled and her breath sucked in and swayed in instinct faster than decision against him. Thumb messenger of the member she could feel as she pressed against him for his kiss. As his lips moved onto hers in a patient, long, sensual kiss, a voice was singing in a low throaty joyous voice:
“How good to fight beside you,
people of my base.
With you I work
forehead to forehead.
With you I plant corn,
stand in the tree picking apples.
How good to fight beside you,
friend of our long table,
mother of my child.
We share the soup and the bread,
the trouble and the meetings
that last till sharp dawn.
How good to fight beside you.
An army of lovers cannot lose,
an army of lovers cannot lose.
How good to fight for each other.”
“How can anybody sing about fighting on such a night?” she asked against his chest, drawing a deep breath.
“On such a night people die at the front, like any other,” he said. “This flimsy gets in the way with its bubbles.” He gestured into the dark. “Here is my space. Will you come in?”
“You know I will.” She laughed. She was startled then to hear that old happy laugh from her chest, that sensual laugh Claud had loved to feel with his hands against her. In the last years she had laughed little and never like that.
They stumbled together along a path and up two steps to his door that opened with a tug. Slam of the screen door behind them. He groped at the wall. “I’ll get the light.”
“No. Please. Let it stay dark.” She did not want to see his space, the strangeness of another time. She wanted to be in the simple space of bed, the space of body against body, constant in any time.
“However you like. I can see you with my fingers.”
She felt frightened when he said that, as if he could read her mind, her need, her memories. How much did Luciente absorb and know of her? Yet she felt his kindness radiating toward her and she relaxed and accepted it as she accepted the breeze flowing through the open window.
“What’s that out there?” Bird in the night.
“Whippoorwill.” His arm came around her, he was leading her to a low firm bed covered with softness, silky and clinging but thick, as if there could be satin pile. Kneeling, he drew her down and she half fell onto the invisible bed. As he helped her free of the flimsy and nestled down beside her he was naked himself, vastness of his body all about. The substantial velvet shock of skin on skin. Her head fell in. She grasped his back in handfuls. He slowly began to build her body out of the dark, painting her touch by touch so that each windowpane of skin glowed from inside.
Once more night gave her a big, generous mouth in her arched throat, her breasts burning like bonfires, her belly rolling under his hands. The head was different, smooth as warm rock. Flesh where no flesh had been. Skin smooth against her thighs as his head rested there, lips and tongue into her there where only Claud had done that before, so that the pleasure came down wet and she melted into him