Embrace

In 79AD Mount Vesuvius erupted, engulfing the village of Pompeii in fiery molten rock and ash.  People were flash-frozen in time and they are forever memorialized in almost statuesque grace. There is one pair called the Lovers of Pompeii that are forever bound together in an embrace. 



Her finger trembled.

He felt it as her hand was against his cheek...he had his arms wrapped around her in a full embrace and her arms were drawn up against her like she was praying...the morning was a bit in play and the scarcity of the light still meant it was early.

He could inhale her.  The freshly showered skin...her lotion.  But mostly it was her stillness...engulfing her in a clutch that pushed skin against skin...and it was warm...a full-body warmth that you only feel in baths...where every portion of of you is heated and unlike any artificial fire or flame it is the proximity of each other that pulses a temperature.

Body heat...such a perfect climate beneath the white pale sheets and comforter in a winter.  They were supine in bed, cradled.  Traffic was white noise, but even her breathing was undetected...rather it was in the tiniest of movements that he knew she was letting go...relaxing...returning to a sleep.

Embryonic...floating in space, breathing in each other...a hammock.  The same size, shape and alignment...if seen from above they would form perfect parallel lines that were slightly bent.

He held her and felt her feather weight...his arms were gripped around her and she was in a cocoon of him.  Nestled beneath him he watched her eyes...closed, but occasional tremors like a return to sleep...he felt her body jerk slightly, knowing she was trusting and letting go...the first step off a pier into a lake of sleep...that drop, the suddenness and the slight jostle...he pulled her in closer when he felt her experiencing that plunge...murmured to her..."you're here...you're okay" and she nodded and he felt her body deflate and restore.

Her breathing was trust...safety.  He held her and what felt like minutes moved around the clock's face and he just tried to absorb her.  Letting her melt into him...butter on a skillet, a silence around them that was unfair to other mornings that weren't like that exact moment...five minutes, fifteen..30.  Just still.

Still.

Like two lovers in Pompeii inexorably preserved forever, he held onto her and merely diminished all things to simple breathing...to simple being...she moved slightly, a reminder that she existed...she lived...she was here.

Throughout the year she was a name, a voice...a sound or a sentence in an email.  She was a song that was playing in an upstairs bedroom that you could barely hear.  She was like the reveal of an opening front door...an invited guest long overdue.  She was a hope...and often a prayer.  A murmur.  A conjecture.  Imagined...fantasized.  She sometimes said his name....not always, but at times.  And in those moments he clung to a piece of her like a touch-stone...a reminder, a rejoinder...where he could return to and find her.

In this clench he knew he had found such a place...restorative...delicate...calming...such calm.  Peace. It was like a bit of redemption...if he were to be buried in flames and molten lava there was no other place that he would rather be.  She was an escape.  An exit.

to something much better.  And that he should hold on to it.  And be better.

She stirred, her eyes blinking and she smiled in her morning grin.  The light was returning to the room, the day was invading...his mind became cluttered with the tasks ahead...but his warmth remained and he collected his memories and placed them high on a shelf inside of his mind to preserve for much later.  And kissed her to remind himself she was real.