He did, of course: but not, as some have said, as if I’d been delivered

in a bubble to my mother’s womb; as if I’d lived preserved upon a thin

and sanitary towel rolled out before me, the mud never oozing up between

my toes; as if I, myself, could not see it coming. I saw it clearly, and the

belief that it was coming for me required some suspension of others and

no small bit of laughter: I was young, and it took a while to realize what

it meant for him to so consistently choose the most haggard from among

us first for plans and play. I was far from perfect, and I would grow up

with a curiosity over why I might have been so privileged by him towards

a middle aged assumption that it had to do with my reclusive availability

(my youth spent frequently out of doors), towards what he finally told me

in death- which is my own little secret for now (it is linked, scandalously

enough, with aromatics). You would blush if I told you how many times we

actually had to try; I certainly did at the time. The first, among abundant

yards of lavender, began in attendance of the bridge beneath my ankle, which

I had not prior seen as a thing of special beauty in itself; then, there was the

current of his I fished out muddily from the river, my calves as solid stones

just to pull him up to where I needed him to be. There were times that began

as hands naturally might, holding shoulders clenched from kneading dough;

and times that involved no touching at all but came in the surprised flight of

starlings from bare trees, my limbs an imitation of their outward corporate

burst which I cupped, struggling, to my chest until the moment they could be

set free inside him. (I was spared the syncretic threat of swans, not to mention

their ungovernable bills, though I admired them, nonetheless, from a distance.)

Every time he left me as one does the room of a beloved host: more than tidy,

lived in; comforts tucked in corners out of way for future visits, more familiar

than I was before he found me. I, by turns, left him like a sodded spade: caked

in clods of earth, closer to a thing he was unmade for. When I finally conceived,

it was a shock to everyone, not least of all to me; I had stopped thinking then

in terms of rationales. I know this isn’t possible, but it was almost like what

we had to show for it ended up a culmination of our trying, each tide subsiding

having calcified the new life now between us. It was the best kind of love, and

made me not mind the jealous looks I got from other girls who thought I had

no reason to be smiling as I did. He is making it still. Its in the tension river

water holds above the stone it passes over, its in the way gulls catch their

balance as they walk by shifting wings. He is there, pouring over us,

making something new, asking only for our unashamed consent.