EMMETSBURG: Three

Midnight blue. The storm was all but spent now. It lifted like a veil from the night. Bright white flashes on the tilting horizon silhouetted a tree line at the end of his property and a distant barn, reminding him of France and distant artillery duels. The barn was turned so that he could see directly through the open doors at either end, like an escape through this world into another. It left the yard strewn with branches, and torn sheets of tar paper from the roof. Anna pulled away slowly, holding on to his hand. She tugged at it lightly.

“Come to bed,” her voice was laced with reluctant desire. “We’ll get a new perspective on things in the morning.”

At the bedroom door she lifted away her gown and let it fall to the floor. John smiled, for not a moment before he’d had a strange sense, a feeling that the moments he was living now were as memories, as if they had already happened. At the bedroom door John took in her nakedness. She lay across the bed, her arms stretched above her head, accentuating full breasts, shone white and perfect in the darkness. Anna’s nipples were round and swollen. Her hair was thrown across the pillow. The room was suddenly filled with the scent of her sex. It beckoned him to her.

John slipped from his shorts and climbed up over her, hovering there momentarily, as though he was floating above some intensely desirable landscape; as if he was a banished native to that land coming home after so long. As she opened herself to him Anna reached up and touched his face.

Her expression was encyclopedic. There was desire to be sure, but more than that there was the deepest sadness. Her eyes were the deepest of dark pools, and John could not be certain if that sadness was more for her or for him. Her thighs caressed his flanks. He hesitated at her gaze. It was almost too much for him.

“Are you sure?” he whispered.

She nodded, her eyes filled more with resolve than anything else. “Come into me, John.”

He found her and teased her lightly, delighting as she pulled eagerly at his hips. Her breath was warm. Anna brought her lips to his ear and pulled at his hips, imploring him to fill her. A sigh escaped her as he pressed himself tightly to her. She wrapped her legs tightly around his waist and whispered softly to him.

“Oh, John, I missed you.”

They made love for what seemed an eternity, erasing the world outside; the storm, sirens across town, the rattle of an old truck as it sped down Pleasant Street.. The rain came in fits and starts. The storm’s power, its melancholy and passion fully reflected in their lovemaking, as though it was a symphony to their dance. Finished, John and Anna lay beside one another staring at the ceiling. Their breaths thundered in the room, their bodies glistening from their sudden and unexpected expressions for one another.

Bluish flashes of lightening were distant now, the thunder barely audible. John looked over at Anna and thought to say something. There were tears in her eyes. He knew what they were for. A sorrowful moan almost escaped him. Sleep came quickly and as a blessing.