Garden Exiles

I can’t tell you what happened. I can only relate the aftermath.

If I were to detail the event, list its stages, the sensations and the feelings, what I said, what he said… It would be like narrating a car-crash. The moment metal kissed, the sound of the glass shattering, the nanosecond of engine roar, the eon of silence in which the airbag did not deploy, the sense of awe as the steering wheel broke my jaw and crushed three ribs, and the relief of feeling pain and knowing I was alive.

This was not a car crash. Though I am in pain and infinitely glad to be alive. But still, the first thing I feel is sadness. As if I’ve just been summarily ejected from the garden of Eden.

I don’t know how long I’ve slept, but it’s dawn when I wake.  The muscles along my sides ache as I attempt to roll over. But his thigh is wedged between mine and the semen has stuck us together like a post-office mishap. Not like superglue. I know a concerted effort on my part would free me. But then, all at once, I can feel the deep, warm wrongness of the cuts on my shoulder. Hotter than the other places his chest meets the skin of my back.

He is breathing into my hair – thick, moist breaths – deeply enough to prickle my scalp.  His hand has been left, in a moment of unconsciousness, on my hip. And yet something in his dreams has made him curl his fingers enough to ensure a soft grip.

I inhale and there is a dull, sore throb in my cunt. My labia feel like my lips, swollen, the tissues are sulking at having been rudely used.  Maybe what is binding us together beneath the sheets is not cum, but blood.

For a moment I’m scared to look. Gently, I pull the sheets back, annoyed at my squeamishness.  Sometimes I wish I were a different sort of person. The kind who refuses to know. But I always want to know. I want to know everything. And that is why I’m here. And why I hurt. And why I feel like a gutted angel: relieved of my wings and my womb.

No, that sounds like a tragedy and this is not. Have you ever noticed how dawn can do strange things to your emotions? I am happy-sad.

I move so slowly.  And perhaps because the day’s heat has already crept into the room, and my inner thighs have begun to sweat, the unsticking is effected with no drama, and I roll over onto my stomach, prop myself up on my elbows, and look at him.

Locked away in sleep, he is the stranger who moves me to tears. Childlike at the crook of his mouth and old at the corner of his closed eyes.  The masculinity of his beard bristle wars with the fragility of his lower lip. There is a smudge of dried blood on his cheek where it hollows out below the bone. More streaks rusty on his chest, flaking now, like watercolour. And lines on his forehead for all the years he worried. Sometimes I want to smooth them away with the tip of my tongue. But not today. Today the lines are appropriate.

When he wakes, will he feel like I do? Like an exile from the garden? Will he damn me for reaching for the fruit? Will he be ashamed of his nakedness? Will he want to cower and hide, now that I know him so completely?

Part of me wishes I felt that way: ashamed.  I should be.  Because smart, adult, well-educated, stable women don’t go where I went to last night.  I know that; he knows it, too.

I am not ashamed. But I’m dreading how he will look at me when he wakes up. So, I don’t wake him with a kiss, or slide back between his out-flung arms, and nestle close to his body.  There are times when touch can bridge the gap that silence cleaves. But this is not one of those times.

Last night, our silences cut bright white lines into the void. Last night was a bell jar. Last night, I consumed him like a mantis eats her mate, while he ripped off my wings and our desire ate up all the oxygen, and the glass creaked under the pressure of our demands for more. Last night, his exhalations were the only air to be had.  Last night, I wore myself like a new skin. And he disrobed me, unveiling my monstrosity. Folded back all the civilities, licked his lips, and bit my pretty little heart in two. Like the monster I always knew him to be. Last night, had his exhalations been the only air to be had, I would have expended it all, begging him for more.

His breathing has changed. His jaw moves, as if he’s chewing his way into the world. I lean my chin on my clasped hands and wait, all my aches forgotten in a moment of abject terror.

“Hey,” he says. His voice cracks in a parched throat.

One monstrous eye opens, then the other.  Then they both close again. My nails dig into my skin. I know he’s thinking, remembering.

When he opens them again, there is a distance in them, as if he’d been staring at a far horizon streaked with red and gold and the prelude to a sunrise in his mind.

“Are we good?” he asks, and slides an upturned palm towards me across the soiled sheets.

I don’t take the hand. The hand is not enough. Wincing at the soreness, I push myself into his flesh, bury my face against his neck and breathe him in. Because sometimes, touch is far more eloquent than words. And this is one of those times.