Arabrab in May

I could not look at her without a tear forming in my heart, swollen and incapable of breaking.

Her innocence shone. Empty face taking in the shelves of whiskey, traveller's photos of the cottage. We'd gotten away from the city. Seeing each other for two months of tentative longing , believing, willing that the other could provide solace for breaks we'd begun to put together. Tears unwept, smiles unbroken. We were close enough to be scared it just might be...

The ease of Fife was the perfect escape. Here was space to stand exposed or shrink back afraid. We arrived and it was clear that this served to fill a gulf. Car doors slammed in unison and bright exchange of faces at sunlight pouring lazily onto the roof of our little cottage. Not Canada or Norway but here in simple Fife - though similarly pined, clear and empty.

An evening spent easy tumbling, red wine and oven baked chicken. Full and rosy we fall into bed. Sex forgettable but friendly, sober breakfast and a morning walking mindfully amongst the trees. Lost in nature's details that urban coarseness makes it essential to override. How could you look at a face with intense love interest, note its pores, freckles and sumptuous blemishes when its likely response was a grimace and turn away?

Oak, fern and rowan provided accomodation for the exercise. Stopped wonder at cells, veins, the shining surface of a leaf.

Then she broke. Inexplicably. Silence shining on every surface and she broke. Weight too frequently falling into reverie that plants find it hard to sustain. She could not look beyond what she carried within, like a pregnant belly waiting for birth.

The was no curse, just an outpouring of stillness, streaming eyes a request to be alone and running down the path, skirt beaten into clouds by skipping ankles, an inch of damp above the hem from the morning's dew, branches closing behind her, a curtain for the play.

I made it back to the cottage alone. Concocted a dark siropy cup of sweet coffee in the steel Italian espresso maker on the wood burning stove, sank deep into a chair covered with a patchwork quilt frayed after decades of contented sitting. Odd country scenes looked down from the pictures on the walls. Of pheasant shoots, Sunday walks and witticisms from Victorian social circles now dull and obsolete but comforting, brown and safe.

I should have read it during love makng and would do subsequently - how she would drift off - feeling it all intensely climaxing in damp sweat and hoarse gasps but something had left. Physical body in its arching swoon, young summer blush unfit to house the melancholy that ushered her spirit away as if it did not deserve this clench, holding close what she desired.

She returned. White skin glowing, lit up as she passed the window. Through the door, displacing boots, crossed the room and curled into my lap, taking coffee from me and making a sour face as she tasted all the sugar. Inclined head, hair pressing softly at my neck, resting in understanding that this distance would not be overcome. Would I mind, though, accompanying her a little along the way? as she moved in love's slender reaches, at the finger tip touch, which was, for now, enough.