mattlaneydotcom

Because of this and other reasons, the young woman and the young man go on that fateful Memorial Day, go down to The River’s bank.

They push the red polyethylene canoe into the River’s green water at a secluded spot accessible only by brief portage down a narrow dirt path through the lush green conifer forest. The world is alive with birdsong. And animal sounds. And the voice of the River. The River smells clean. Upstream from here, the River’s water flows from the mouth of a steep-sided ravine.

And beyond the ravine? Their destination.

Late morning now. The sun kisses and warms their skin where it’s bare and uncovered. As they paddle the canoe, they make idle conversation. For a bit. They’ve only been here once before with a small group of mutual friends. Now, it’s just them; just a woman and a man.

She sits in the front of the canoe. She’s taken her hoodie off and wears her bikini top. Her back is muscular, athletic. He watches the muscles of her back tighten and relax with each long paddle she makes.

The air smells of the River. Smells raw, alive.

Much later after they stop and pull the canoe ashore and eat the meal they’ve packed and drink the bottle of dry white wine they’ve packed, that’s when they come to rest. The two of them, the young woman and the young man, lay on a blanket near the River’s bank. They’ve swum in the River’s waters where it forms a shallow pool under a bank of tall trees, and the sun penetrates the cloudy green water to warm it.

They are both tired, yet not tired.

And she leaves the blanket and stands in front of him.

She pushes her bikini bottom down to her ankles and steps out of it. He bears witness to her smooth skin and her tan lines and her mons pubis and the dark hair of her womanhood. He feels desire and fumbles with the condom. She’s giving herself to him, trusts him as he trusts her in that fleeting moment the young woman and young man share under the trees.

The sun climbs down from zenith and the world grows to early-afternoon shadows.

And afterwards as they lay on the blanket nude and side-by-side, her back pressed against his chest and his legs following the contours of the back of her thighs, and his body cups her lower back and her ass, and his hand lazily drapes over her stomach, his fingertips barely touching the outer edge of her pubic hair.

And the late-afternoon shadows play with the sun in the trees above them.

And this is when she tells him of her brother.

The one who went away to War. The one who didn’t come back.

She turns her head back to him. Her face sees his. She asks if he knows “In Flanders Fields.”

He tells her he does.

He’s lost in her dark eyes. In her warm breath. In her body which is so close to his, and her soft skin and the smell of her.

And she tells him she’s still sad. That it’s almost like a rock that weighs on her and she wants to let the rock go, but she can’t. And she asks him if this will ever stop.

And that, sometimes, she feels like Ophelia, drifting down to the lake’s bottom.

And she needs him to take her hand, to pull her up.

And she holds her rosary.

And he tells her that he’s known loss. Not like hers.

But loss.

And he tells her he’s afraid of losing her.

And the two of them, the young man and the young woman, want the world.

And there’s an unsaid understanding now.

And the sun sinks low to the west. They grow cold in their nakedness. The garden closes for the night.

And they dress.

And they go back downstream to the World.