I did not hear her until she spoke.
One word, softly. "Alma."
I only half turned from the window.
How did I look to her, marked by the alien score of moonlight,
silhouetted, my arms wrapped round me. Like a pillar of belligerence?
Could she feel it? Or had she only come to see if I were ready to leave,
my capacity for people being small and unwilling to expand?
She stood there in the doorway with her hands in her pockets and silver
light splashed across her shoulders and face. She did not speak again at
once, though she did not seem to expect me to. She assessed me in
that way she had. "What's wrong?"
She had noticed. I should have known it. I did know it. She had, at the
first opportunity, risen, and placing her wine glass on the lamp table and
excusing herself from the honey and jade woman she had come directly
to find me. "Nothing."
"Ah." She waited, slender, poised, marked by silver.
I spun away, sought desperately the harsh bare trees as if they could anchor me for turmoil dashed itself crazily within me, took me in its disconcerting way denying boundaries, restraints, upsetting all. I hated it, feared, dreaded it as though I must reveal the shame of falling before her in some disgusting, pitiable fit spewing foam and spilling urine.