Even a morse code message into black arctic night supersedes silence, when the time comes for speaking

No ghosts will ever linger in these halls. No handworn shine will grace these doorknobs. No twilit luster of aged floorboards. The closet hinges, when they rub, will never voice the concerns of departed strangers. They will never be more than an irritation in need of lubricant. Love will never birth here. Contentment perhaps, resignation perhaps, but never love. This house is barren. A wombless woman, birthed at midage, beautiless, forgettable, and forgotten. A holding pen, a waiting room. A space to be occupied briefly, between the coming and going. This is my dwelling place.

* * *

I, even I, am caught up sometimes at night in this undertow of spring. This hand tugging, rubberbanded legs, gravitational pull. This fresh flower season, this do-you-take-this-woman season. This put on your best suit and tie season. As he and she and he and she and he and she and he and she walk down that mile long aisle, forever leaving behind that youth departed. I’m on the stage smiling, clapping, or with hands clasped solemnly left over right, rocking slowly left to right, soles aching, waiting for them to reach the opengate of the light flooded exit and fade to white, waiting for the faces to turn back, all the tearstained eyes, kerchief veiled noses, happiness at its most agonizing, back to us, the entourage. Beside me in the depressed carpet footprints of the newlywed, stand the spectres of alternate endings, previous and future lives, the outcomes of different fates, different words spoken, nights spent, cards mailed, different chemicals in the brain, in the heart. How many ghosts remain before that alter? Departed from the body in two syllables, barely a breath, inaudible to the backrow sitters, but to us backup players and the pastor and God, enough. We procede down the aisle, formally, in pairs, arm in arm, strangers or friends. From the pews the watchers watch us, endowed with importance and residual sacredness in the name of ceremony, follow in tail, the lovebonded.

I, even I, can’t keep the thoughts at bay, the curiosity. How does love feel up close? Everyday. In joy and strife. In the kitchen and the bed and the bathroom cabinet and the car and the hall closet. Like a new skin or a rubbersuit. Or deepsea diving. Never again will feet touch solid land. But always submerging. A house underwater, a job, a car underwater. Everything tossed in the sea, sinking deeper in this perfecting body of love.

Never up close is not a beach. Not a laying on a towel, marveling at the vast expanse. Never a building of sandcastles that are swept away by the evening tide and rebuilt with canals and dams and again swept away. This is love as an idea, a blue swath on a map of the world, a directory of oceangoing vessels. No. Love up close must be like diving. Deep submergence, a wetness beyond wetness. Until wetness loses all definition. Until wetness and beingness are so entwined they are one. Until dry land becomes a speck on the horizon. A lonely desert island from which one must escape.