Lux
I.
At night, my invisible twin comes and embraces me; she holds me in her arms. She pretends to me that she is my loved one—or perhaps the weight of her body next to mine reminds me of that other’s body next to mine, the warmth, the feeling of him against my entire back, his arms against my arms, his chin tucked into the curve of my neck, his mouth low against my jaw, the warmth of his breath a low huffing against my skin.
The moon comes in through my windows—they open to the south, and it is only at new moon that I get any peace, that I do not sleep under its spotlight, that I do not wake and find that light waiting. It would make sense, I suppose, to tip the blinds the other way, but then the street could see me. I would have to dress, crouched on the floor. So, I lie in that bath of light and cannot sleep.
I imagine, then, that she is standing in the room, watching me. She feels the same tightness in her gut, the restlessness of limbs. She watches me, her lashes minked with tears. She stands, a stillness in the room, a stillness in me. She stands, half-air, half-ground, a body unweighted by bones or the cares of the real. Her cares are easier: I have to care that it was him who did it—she only has to care that it was done.
The vigil is too much for me, and I turn to the wall, clearing half the bed. She climbs in and curls her warm self around me, like a boa. She seals herself to me, pastes herself to my back like a rice paper doll, but the feel of her, of her warm breath, the caress of her presence, feels to my skin like any other. My skin tells my head; my head tells my heart; my heart carols and I curl into myself, quiet and confident in joy.
It comforts me when I am alone that I am her care, I am her single point: she navigates towards me, like the moon across the sky, trailing behind her the milky stars of tears. She is always looking for me, looking for my house, high in the heavens.
II.
The valley, that room where I contained him: mountains east, north, south, and the west another stretch of mountains, but broken by a lake, broken by a passage west. The Oquirrh Mountains: ocher, oranged like the city lights; ocher, sacred and native, sacred in their breaking, in their passageway to another life. The flatness of the plains around them are full of salt grass, smoke from the open-face copper mine, the stink of the lake. I had never been to the Oquirrhs when I was with him. I had never been west enough to see beyond that tableau: the western mountains, the light blue sky at the rim of them, the darker night above, a faint moon remembered as an afterthought, the stars whose names I did not know.
I imagine the pertinent constellations now and know their swing—how they rotated above us, lying there, paired like two constellations. I was not even aware of their motion then: how the larger forces of fate and time wheel above me and, like a small animal, I clutch and sleep beneath them.
The city haloed up into that night, the lights of all the streets and houses opening like one great eye. I did not know the cup of the valley. I did not understand the canyons around it, how they leak off into other valleys, other plains of grass and pines. I did not understand the migrations of the deer in and out of the park, how they came down through the canyon to eat the grass, stand and drink in the sprinklers, and lift their dumb muzzles to the same night as I.
III.
But what about the dream? The dream is none of this: the dream is tables full of my relatives and friends, half of whom are unfamiliar, the wedding guests. We eat whole pigs on white tablecloths, laid fully with silverware and an array of glasses, the right ones filled with a deep red wine. I drink and fill again, and all around everyone talks and talks; I hear them. You are across from me, drinking too, and sometimes we see each other.
In the dream, it’s all in that look: I love you, I love you; be my wife, be my husband. And then your neighbors draw you back into conversation, and I watch you, thinking, Tonight, the night before our wedding, I will sleep with you. It is a sign of: I cannot wait.
This is all taking place in a tent connected to my front door—the tables laid in my front yard, hills in the grass making the tables dip and tilt, and the pine tree just in front of the porch has been moved. The guests laugh and chatter, and I want to make a toast to you, to the groom. I empty my glass into me, to fill it again and toast. I want to stand, but I’m so drunk, I hardly can. I want to speak, but I fall, drunk, back into the chair. I stand. I want to make a toast to you. Instead, you are beside me, holding me up, and, instead of toasting, we stagger, both drunk and holding our red- and amber-filled glasses. The wine changes in the glass itself, red when the night comes into it, amber when the day.
We walk away from the party into my house, crossing the porch. The front door is open for guests and for dinner to be carried and served from the kitchen. We sit on the stairs, just inside, and, soon, I am lying next to you, half on top of you. I am drunk, drunk, drunk, so I lie against you, the softness of the carpet like fur underneath us, each stair somehow flattening and curving to match our bodies.
You are warm, like that night, when canyon winds carried sprinkler spray like spit into my face.
In this whole dream, we have hardly spoken. In fact, we have not yet even kissed. And so I lift my head up and kiss you, right at the jaw. Someone—my father, who is dead but does not startle me by being here, or my brother, who introduced us—passes by, interrupts us, startled, disapproving. You sit up. Our guests outside, and we’re lying on the stairs. But I know why I have gotten you this far—I drink the last from the glass in my hand and take you up to the top of the stairs, where we sit, you wanting to talk about what needs to be done, the taking care of the real. I want to kiss, so I do. For a moment, you stop talking and remember what it felt like to kiss me.
Then, you start talking again. But it is him now and not you. He has come into my dream, bringing his unbending body and real smell. He is accusing me of my own past. I have locked myself in that canyon room and never come out.
This is not what I wanted to do, debate about what I have done since he left me, and not just because it is the day before our wedding. I take his hand and take the argument into the bedroom. He stands at the open door, talking, and I sit on the bed, talking back.
This same bed, this same bedroom, as it draws to dusk outside. The blinds white out the windows. The ceiling light yellows the room. Shadows dust the corners. Outside, I know somehow that the tent is emptying, that a wind begins to blow over the tables, picking up napkins and dropping them on the ground, rolling the silverware off the tables with a sound like chimes.
The sycamores swing just a little their dry, broad leaves in the wind.
I know, standing out there in the grey light, I would squint against the wind, the way I squint down at the bedroom floor, its wooden planks dark and light and splintering, and I would cry straight-faced, dust in my eyes.
I am not surprised—it’s all too sure—when he leaves and goes back to smooth over the everyday things, turns to my mother in the hall who has come to fetch us. The guests are worried, bored, and leaving, impatient for our hospitality. As he turns away, he takes you back, like a shirt lent too long.
(Not because I miss you, but because I miss at all, she lies against me and coos like love.)
Sian M. Jones received an MFA in fiction from Mills College. Her work has appeared in Lammergeier Magazine and Teleport Magazine, among other publications. In her day job, she writes as clearly as she can about complex code. She occasionally updates jonessian.com.
