R. Scott
Paloma and The Monk
Praise be to those who know without knowing, who feel without proof.
I. Living.
Paloma looked up at the bright heavy moon and asked God what lesson could be learned from loving a monk. The monk in question was miles away, and had just spoken with her on the phone. During their call, Paloma and the monk had told each other of their secrets and desires. She wanted to lick every inch of his skin. She told him, “I want to lick every inch of your skin.” The monk liked to hear what she wanted. He said he imagined eating her out in a field, a field of grass. She said she would like that. She asked the monk, “If you had a paintbrush, what part of my body would you paint first?” The monk said he would start at her collarbone. Paloma said, “Yes.” She would paint his hip bone first. After hanging up, they sat in separate silence, looking to the one sky for relief.
“My name is Paloma.
Today I feel like a grinning idiot
walking in the street.
Sometimes I am a daughter.
Sometimes I am a scholar.
But always I am hopeful.
I ask the world, ‘Is this okay?’
and the answer is
a grinning idiot walking in the street.”
Today I feel like a grinning idiot
walking in the street.
Sometimes I am a daughter.
Sometimes I am a scholar.
But always I am hopeful.
I ask the world, ‘Is this okay?’
and the answer is
a grinning idiot walking in the street.”
They were people with cellphones. They shared a love of literature, the color orange, California, the cello, and the word “good.” They met on the internet. They lived in different states. To know one another demanded great creativity.
All day long they prepared for The Question Game. She placed both hands on her chest and closed her eyes to think of what to ask him. Assuming this position cleared her head of doubt and her body of lust. Sometimes. When thinking of his questions for her, the monk walked far from what he knew, far from the monastery he called home, far from the other monks, out into the garden, out into the street, all the way to the edge of the road, where he would sit cross-legged in the dirt. Among insects and eyelevel to turning wheels, he could think.
She called him “the monk” in the privacy of her notebook, but did not know if this was the correct term for what he was. He could have belonged to any religious order; it didn’t come up much. Religion was irrelevant to Paloma. Her parents raised her without God, but she’d found Him anyway, inside her chest. She identified things based on the voice she heard reverberating there. Very hard she tried to understand.
The monk was a person trying to become an angel. He wished desperately to live like Jesus. But he was a man, and thus experienced all the longing of Man. He struggled to accept what fell strictly on the side of humans, and not, in his opinion, on the side of the Divine. Desire, jealousy, indulgence, ambition: that he housed such feelings gave seed to intense self-hate. The monk lost count of the number of days a year he was sick. The parts of himself he shared with others—his generosity, kindness, love, and humor—he swore were his true nature. “Let me be a container only for light,” he prayed.
As a boy, he played in the ocean. Darting into waves. Laughing like a bell. Grains of sand between fingers. Now he studied high in the mountains, where seawater did not kiss the ground for miles.
Loving someone you can’t see is exactly how Paloma imagined Jesus felt being God’s son. She walked day and night all over her city with headphones pushed deep inside her ears to better hear the monk’s voice. She walked quickly and with fluttery hands, laughing loudly and often. She loved to hear him breathing into the phone. Knowing he was alive at the same moment as her was not nothing.
They sent things in the mail. He sent incense, an engraved pocket knife, Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, and a photo of himself at fifteen. Boy, black hair, grinning. In return, she sent seashells from a trip she took to Mexico, a long green ribbon she used to tie back her hair, and a film photograph of Central Park she shot at seventeen. Unceasing archway of skeletal trees.
He felt God’s hand on his life. Talking with Paloma slackened his hold on reality. He feared it was not God, but his own mortal hand orchestrating. The monk began walking through the night, returning just before dawn when the other monks were asleep. Fasting became a constant practice no longer reserved for holy days. He was losing weight, lightening, opening for something to fill him. He questioned whether he was becoming a vessel for God, or if he was just becoming handsome. The journey he and Paloma were embarking on was not a clean fate. The love they had was pure and unexpected, but he knew the love they were created for was God’s love, which had nothing to do with the Earthly plane. He came from a long line of Heaven-concerned men, a Church-rooted family tree. His people were proud of him. Still, in following his heart, and committing himself to monastic life, he was aware of what he had given up: time with his dying father, feeling a member of this world, experiencing to the fullest his first love, the possibility of creating a family of his own. Paloma renewed his vigor, and appreciation of holy creation. Undoubtedly she was a teacher. What could the temptation of her love teach him about God’s plan?
The monastery taught that no two monks should read together from the same text. One should not direct nor influence another monk’s dialogue with God, for fear he will cloud what God wishes to reveal. Paloma and the monk ended their nights by reading to each other over the phone. While they went about their waking lives, they texted links to songs they found moving and pictures of beauty they encountered. In their notebooks they kept a list of omens they saw. Naturally, over time, their bond evolved into a joint study of life and love. Blasphemy for him, an answered prayer for her.
In his letters, the monk asked Paloma to think of a solution to their predicament. Her physical existence tested his vow to dedicate his life to Heaven. He went to bed in tears thinking of her voice and thoughts and lips. That he could never hold her in the way that he craved agonized him. A possible life with Paloma preoccupied his imagination, and these daydreams leeched his real life, the tactile culmination of all his choices, of color. He lost his ability to sit still. In prayer, he began picturing her face where once there had been a welcome void. “Please,” the monk said to the sky, “please.”
Time passed. They played more games. The monk created a poetry game where one person names an everyday object, such as a “ring,” which the other person has to describe as if to a child, using only words and ideas they never previously connected to that object. Paloma described a “ring” as a “circle that holds itself.” The monk liked that. Another game they played was a role playing game. They assigned one another a character in a basic scenario anyone could experience. It was a luxury to play as two people out in the world at the same time and place. Once they took turns acting as a cop pulling the other over for a busted taillight. That was the night Paloma learned the monk had authority issues. Another scenario they enjoyed was when she pretended to be a Target employee, and he a frazzled customer searching for a particular style of sock. This scene made them laugh because the monk inevitably asked Paloma out, and she rejected him because she was just a girl trying to get through another day on the clock.
He told her she was bold.
“I am bold,” she repeated.
He delighted in this aspect of her, he also felt it gave rise to unwise behavior. She disagreed. She saw how the monk built his existence following a blueprint drawn by another man. This saddened her.
“I am bold,” she repeated.
Paloma worried about crippling herself with devotion. She was not proud of the fact she was in love with a man living a state away in a monastery. It was an accident. No one knew how this would go, but everyone did know, anyone she spoke to of him looked at her with concern. People reminded her that she returned to an empty bed each night to have the monk read her to sleep. “That is not sustainable,” they told her, shaking their heads. Paloma nodded, then drove home, and slipped into bed, where she spent the night clinging to cold bed sheets.
The rare nights he slept, he dreamed of sons and daughters, of Paloma backlit in a doorway, an orange orchard rolling behind her. He would jolt awake, drenched in sweat, the yells of his unborn children perfuming his tidy, barren room.
Sometimes she touched herself while listing her blessings. It felt so pure, coming while uttering her gratitude list, feeling good while being good. She felt she was inventing a new form of giving thanks to God. She wondered if this practice propelled her closer to her true purpose. Joyous communion between body, mind and soul. This ritual caused her absolutely no shame, though she never mentioned it to the monk, for she knew the traditions he upheld forbade him from pleasuring himself.
One afternoon while folding laundry, Paloma and the monk imagined what a home owned by the two of them might look like. She envisioned a structure surrounded by trees. She spoke of windows, her love of light, a shared study, stacks of books, an outdoor shower, the color green. He said he trusted her artistic sensibility. He saw life with her as a time of light. He imagined warm and simple rooms, and perhaps, yes, a shared library. They discussed separate offices, and the necessity of independence. The monk wanted a shed as his office, somewhere cold to clear his head. She understood. Her office would have a large window overlooking the yard.
He knew they could not go on in this way, and so they made a plan to meet. He would drive to her since it was not possible to host guests at the monastery. They did not discuss in which room he would sleep, hers or the guest bedroom. Paloma washed the sheets of both beds.
They agreed they would spend their first day together in absolute silence. No words, neither spoken nor written nor mouthed. Silence to make up for months of sound and only sound. Until sundown, Paloma and the monk would experience only the other’s physical presence, how the air in the room shifted around the two of them.
The night before his arrival, Paloma could not sleep. In her journal she wrote possible versions of tomorrow:
All day long they prepared for The Question Game. She placed both hands on her chest and closed her eyes to think of what to ask him. Assuming this position cleared her head of doubt and her body of lust. Sometimes. When thinking of his questions for her, the monk walked far from what he knew, far from the monastery he called home, far from the other monks, out into the garden, out into the street, all the way to the edge of the road, where he would sit cross-legged in the dirt. Among insects and eyelevel to turning wheels, he could think.
She called him “the monk” in the privacy of her notebook, but did not know if this was the correct term for what he was. He could have belonged to any religious order; it didn’t come up much. Religion was irrelevant to Paloma. Her parents raised her without God, but she’d found Him anyway, inside her chest. She identified things based on the voice she heard reverberating there. Very hard she tried to understand.
The monk was a person trying to become an angel. He wished desperately to live like Jesus. But he was a man, and thus experienced all the longing of Man. He struggled to accept what fell strictly on the side of humans, and not, in his opinion, on the side of the Divine. Desire, jealousy, indulgence, ambition: that he housed such feelings gave seed to intense self-hate. The monk lost count of the number of days a year he was sick. The parts of himself he shared with others—his generosity, kindness, love, and humor—he swore were his true nature. “Let me be a container only for light,” he prayed.
As a boy, he played in the ocean. Darting into waves. Laughing like a bell. Grains of sand between fingers. Now he studied high in the mountains, where seawater did not kiss the ground for miles.
Loving someone you can’t see is exactly how Paloma imagined Jesus felt being God’s son. She walked day and night all over her city with headphones pushed deep inside her ears to better hear the monk’s voice. She walked quickly and with fluttery hands, laughing loudly and often. She loved to hear him breathing into the phone. Knowing he was alive at the same moment as her was not nothing.
They sent things in the mail. He sent incense, an engraved pocket knife, Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, and a photo of himself at fifteen. Boy, black hair, grinning. In return, she sent seashells from a trip she took to Mexico, a long green ribbon she used to tie back her hair, and a film photograph of Central Park she shot at seventeen. Unceasing archway of skeletal trees.
The monk texted her a photo of her ribbon laying flat across his palm.
“You are stronger than me,” he told her.
He felt God’s hand on his life. Talking with Paloma slackened his hold on reality. He feared it was not God, but his own mortal hand orchestrating. The monk began walking through the night, returning just before dawn when the other monks were asleep. Fasting became a constant practice no longer reserved for holy days. He was losing weight, lightening, opening for something to fill him. He questioned whether he was becoming a vessel for God, or if he was just becoming handsome. The journey he and Paloma were embarking on was not a clean fate. The love they had was pure and unexpected, but he knew the love they were created for was God’s love, which had nothing to do with the Earthly plane. He came from a long line of Heaven-concerned men, a Church-rooted family tree. His people were proud of him. Still, in following his heart, and committing himself to monastic life, he was aware of what he had given up: time with his dying father, feeling a member of this world, experiencing to the fullest his first love, the possibility of creating a family of his own. Paloma renewed his vigor, and appreciation of holy creation. Undoubtedly she was a teacher. What could the temptation of her love teach him about God’s plan?
The monastery taught that no two monks should read together from the same text. One should not direct nor influence another monk’s dialogue with God, for fear he will cloud what God wishes to reveal. Paloma and the monk ended their nights by reading to each other over the phone. While they went about their waking lives, they texted links to songs they found moving and pictures of beauty they encountered. In their notebooks they kept a list of omens they saw. Naturally, over time, their bond evolved into a joint study of life and love. Blasphemy for him, an answered prayer for her.
In his letters, the monk asked Paloma to think of a solution to their predicament. Her physical existence tested his vow to dedicate his life to Heaven. He went to bed in tears thinking of her voice and thoughts and lips. That he could never hold her in the way that he craved agonized him. A possible life with Paloma preoccupied his imagination, and these daydreams leeched his real life, the tactile culmination of all his choices, of color. He lost his ability to sit still. In prayer, he began picturing her face where once there had been a welcome void. “Please,” the monk said to the sky, “please.”
“Is not my God your God?” Paloma asked the monk.
Time passed. They played more games. The monk created a poetry game where one person names an everyday object, such as a “ring,” which the other person has to describe as if to a child, using only words and ideas they never previously connected to that object. Paloma described a “ring” as a “circle that holds itself.” The monk liked that. Another game they played was a role playing game. They assigned one another a character in a basic scenario anyone could experience. It was a luxury to play as two people out in the world at the same time and place. Once they took turns acting as a cop pulling the other over for a busted taillight. That was the night Paloma learned the monk had authority issues. Another scenario they enjoyed was when she pretended to be a Target employee, and he a frazzled customer searching for a particular style of sock. This scene made them laugh because the monk inevitably asked Paloma out, and she rejected him because she was just a girl trying to get through another day on the clock.
He told her she was bold.
“I am bold,” she repeated.
He delighted in this aspect of her, he also felt it gave rise to unwise behavior. She disagreed. She saw how the monk built his existence following a blueprint drawn by another man. This saddened her.
“I am bold,” she repeated.
Paloma worried about crippling herself with devotion. She was not proud of the fact she was in love with a man living a state away in a monastery. It was an accident. No one knew how this would go, but everyone did know, anyone she spoke to of him looked at her with concern. People reminded her that she returned to an empty bed each night to have the monk read her to sleep. “That is not sustainable,” they told her, shaking their heads. Paloma nodded, then drove home, and slipped into bed, where she spent the night clinging to cold bed sheets.
The rare nights he slept, he dreamed of sons and daughters, of Paloma backlit in a doorway, an orange orchard rolling behind her. He would jolt awake, drenched in sweat, the yells of his unborn children perfuming his tidy, barren room.
Sometimes she touched herself while listing her blessings. It felt so pure, coming while uttering her gratitude list, feeling good while being good. She felt she was inventing a new form of giving thanks to God. She wondered if this practice propelled her closer to her true purpose. Joyous communion between body, mind and soul. This ritual caused her absolutely no shame, though she never mentioned it to the monk, for she knew the traditions he upheld forbade him from pleasuring himself.
One afternoon while folding laundry, Paloma and the monk imagined what a home owned by the two of them might look like. She envisioned a structure surrounded by trees. She spoke of windows, her love of light, a shared study, stacks of books, an outdoor shower, the color green. He said he trusted her artistic sensibility. He saw life with her as a time of light. He imagined warm and simple rooms, and perhaps, yes, a shared library. They discussed separate offices, and the necessity of independence. The monk wanted a shed as his office, somewhere cold to clear his head. She understood. Her office would have a large window overlooking the yard.
He knew they could not go on in this way, and so they made a plan to meet. He would drive to her since it was not possible to host guests at the monastery. They did not discuss in which room he would sleep, hers or the guest bedroom. Paloma washed the sheets of both beds.
They agreed they would spend their first day together in absolute silence. No words, neither spoken nor written nor mouthed. Silence to make up for months of sound and only sound. Until sundown, Paloma and the monk would experience only the other’s physical presence, how the air in the room shifted around the two of them.
II. Living.
At midnight the stars watched the monk walk thirty minutes to Enterprise car rental. Father Abbott had given him leave without question to visit a nonexistent ailing aunt. The monk felt his lie as a warm, spreading pain in the gut. He told himself he lied in service of resolving what God placed in his path. He was trying to understand the lesson God wanted him to learn. Life was becoming increasingly incomprehensible and unforeseen. Through his windshield he stared at the dark road ensconced in headlight. He planned to drive straight through the night. Redwoods interrupted the edging blackness. He hallucinated impossible oranges on their branches. His heart beat rapidly and irregularly. His stomach was empty, and had been for a day. At that moment, possibility, caffeine pills, and prayer fueled him.The night before his arrival, Paloma could not sleep. In her journal she wrote possible versions of tomorrow:
He drives a dusty sedan up my street. He spots my dark green home, trimmed in burnt orange, just as he sees me sitting there on the curb, fists tucked underneath my chin, pale face, long hair, black coat, waiting. He stops the car in front of me and unravels from the driver’s seat. I pop up. I run to him, awkward and burning. We hug.
Or
He taps his fingers upon the steering wheel. He finds the address and parks. Wind barely stirs trees. The sign of a long summer. He breathes deep and checks his reflection. Sets his mouth. Hours of road led here. A foreign, forgotten thrill rushes his body. He stays seated, savoring this time of “before.” He calls me. “I’m here.”
Or
Laying in a rectangle of sun upon my bed with my hair perfumed and body washed. I look at the trees pressing my window and practice breathing. Smiling a little, I read. I am in the state of “before.” The long, loose, peasant dress I wear slims me. I am so excited, I can barely be. There is a sound of tires on asphalt. I think I might die from this.
Or
He taps his fingers upon the steering wheel. He finds the address and parks. Wind barely stirs trees. The sign of a long summer. He breathes deep and checks his reflection. Sets his mouth. Hours of road led here. A foreign, forgotten thrill rushes his body. He stays seated, savoring this time of “before.” He calls me. “I’m here.”
“What?” I say, breathless, “Oh no! I was nervous, so I went for a walk.”
“Where are you?”
“An hour’s walk away.”
“Well, I’ll come get you.”
“Well, that would be kind.”
Or
Laying in a rectangle of sun upon my bed with my hair perfumed and body washed. I look at the trees pressing my window and practice breathing. Smiling a little, I read. I am in the state of “before.” The long, loose, peasant dress I wear slims me. I am so excited, I can barely be. There is a sound of tires on asphalt. I think I might die from this.
She tightened the loose bolts of her bed right before the monk arrived. Her bed now held her without complaint. The birds outside sang and signaled the coming of the day. She knew he was driving to her, but did not know what time he would come. He wanted to surprise her.
The third hour of driving he saw two magpies perched on a telephone wire. In the fifth hour he noted a chain restaurant called Adam & Eve. Helen Reddy’s “Candle On The Water” played on the radio the tail end of the seventh hour. A tow truck emblazoned with the words “POWERED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT MY MANSION IS IN HEAVEN” drove in front of him the entirety of the ninth hour. At the eleventh hour he was the only car on the road.
She laid in fear. It was possible that, after climbing the many steps to her front door, after traveling so far to meet her, he would be disappointed with what he saw. Or, seeing him she would realize that she had fooled herself into love for the sake of using love as a saving force. Had she swallowed him like a pill to guard against another sad winter? For months they made each other smile, walk lighter, breathe deeper, listen better. And, she countered, who does not hope for love?
She listened to the birdsong and her racing pulse and the groans of eucalyptus outside her window. She heard tires turning on asphalt. She was a butterfly pinned to stretched cotton.
He felt alive and handsome and like a man shifting his car into park, walking down her street, his steps echoing off the other houses.
The rest of her life she would remember how she felt walking out the door and her eyes landing on him, running up her stairs, two at a time, all the way to her, and standing there, panting, awkward and burning, smiling, both of them. Happiness fluttered her hands up to her face, covering her mouth.
He was beautiful to her, though she would have loved him regardless of his appearance, as she had loved him first from the inside out.
While it was still morning, they took a walk in silence. She was so excited, she could barely be. He plucked a bit of green and yellow weed from the sidewalk. Looking at her, he placed the weed in his mouth and chewed, sucked. She held out her palm. He plucked a piece and gave it to her. The taste spread on her tongue and sizzled like lemon. He looked at her, his pinky brushed the back of her hand, he looked at the ground, he looked away, his eyes squinting as if staring directly into the sun.
Later, she rubbed his back. He had a strong and clean back. When he rested his weight against her hands, she felt a surge of care so strong, she gasped, and had to rest her forehead against the back of his head. Her fingers pressed into his shoulders, and her mouth found the center of his neck. He had a pale and soft neck that smelled like warmth itself. Warm body of the person she loved. Hair, skin, pulse. Paloma marveled at this scene while living it. She was aware this was an afternoon she would not easily forget. She pressed her lips to the back of his neck: the first kiss.
They kissed throughout the night. She sat in his lap on the dining room chair. He watched her holding him in the mirror. She closed her eyes, letting him look at her, at the two of them, and how they looked together, flushed and swollen, her closed eyes, chin resting on top of his head. They went to bed early, without dinner. She fell asleep with his hand cupping her shoulder.
In the morning, he woke in regret. Guilt rising and drowning him.
“This is not who I am,” he thought.
She woke beside him in intense happiness. Opening her eyes, she thought: “thank you.” She felt drunk, and warm sunlight fell across her pillow. She turned to face him. He looked back at her as if from a great height. His eyes shone, and she mistook this brightness for a shared feeling. She lifted herself to kiss his forehead.
They looked at one another. She traced his arm. He traced her arm. She looked at him. He reached for her. They began kissing, kissing as a replacement for talking, as a replacement for thinking. She climbed onto his lap. She lifted his shirt. He lifted her shirt. Skin. They rushed to remove the rest of their clothing. She kissed him. He kissed her. He hesitated. She whispered into his mouth, “Just trust me.” He nodded. He kissed her harder. Then slower. They touched, and sighed, she whimpered against his neck, he gasped, and they were not separate anymore.
He laid beneath her, shaking, in a pale sweat for fear of God.
“I’m living on a fucking chessboard.”
All the time she thought about religion. It was less that she had found God. He had found her, and took from her someone she loved. She pursued God with a hunter’s stare, believing if she could understand God, and His religions, she would know how to bring back her beloved.
“But who am I playing against? Huh? You, God, is it you? Because it’s not the monk. He left. So, it’s you.” She stared at the shorn trees. She stared a dead, long while.
“No, I know. I’m sorry. I know I’m playing against me.”
After. There is an After. Afterlife. After the monk. After the monk ended his relationship with Paloma. After his repentance and rejoining with God. After Paloma and the monk had sex in her wrought iron bed. After she said “If you do not love me, leave, it's okay,” and he replied “I do love you, Paloma” and she said, “I love you too.” After she sipped a tear from his left eye. After disgrace. After he showered to wash her off of him. After she boiled two eggs. After they lay in the sun in silence. After he caught her watching him from the stove and assured her this would not be the last time she saw him. After he burned their letters. After he sent her the ashes. After she wept covered in ash on the steps outside her apartment. After she punched the car door. After she slept on the floor for three days, avoiding her bed. After she gave herself to another, a boy with “MEMENTO MORI” inked center on his throat. After she glimpsed the monk’s face in that boy’s face.
The boy once asked her what she felt when she kissed him. He had left school in the ninth grade, after the death of his best friend. The last ten years he spent in Colorado, teaching skiing and sculpting. Rarely he showered. She liked that he smelled, and that his understanding of the world came from what he knew of his body, and of other bodies.
“Kissing you is like drinking water,” she said. He liked that answer. “Can we play the Question Game?”
“What, like I ask you a question?” he asked.
“And I ask you one.”
“Okay.”
“You first.”
“Okay.” He thought hard, too long, staring at his apartment’s dusty wood floor.
“Okay. This is all I could think of. If you were a bird, would you need your song to be heard by a lot of birds? Or just one?”
She smiled. “Just one. How about you?”
“I think,” he glanced sideways, “I think I would need a lot of birds to hear my song. If I was a bird.”
“That’s okay. That’s good.”
He looked away, filling up with something coming from himself. “Yeah, if I was a bird I’d sing really loud.”
And above them, the steadfast sun.
The third hour of driving he saw two magpies perched on a telephone wire. In the fifth hour he noted a chain restaurant called Adam & Eve. Helen Reddy’s “Candle On The Water” played on the radio the tail end of the seventh hour. A tow truck emblazoned with the words “POWERED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT MY MANSION IS IN HEAVEN” drove in front of him the entirety of the ninth hour. At the eleventh hour he was the only car on the road.
She laid in fear. It was possible that, after climbing the many steps to her front door, after traveling so far to meet her, he would be disappointed with what he saw. Or, seeing him she would realize that she had fooled herself into love for the sake of using love as a saving force. Had she swallowed him like a pill to guard against another sad winter? For months they made each other smile, walk lighter, breathe deeper, listen better. And, she countered, who does not hope for love?
She listened to the birdsong and her racing pulse and the groans of eucalyptus outside her window. She heard tires turning on asphalt. She was a butterfly pinned to stretched cotton.
He felt alive and handsome and like a man shifting his car into park, walking down her street, his steps echoing off the other houses.
The rest of her life she would remember how she felt walking out the door and her eyes landing on him, running up her stairs, two at a time, all the way to her, and standing there, panting, awkward and burning, smiling, both of them. Happiness fluttered her hands up to her face, covering her mouth.
He was beautiful to her, though she would have loved him regardless of his appearance, as she had loved him first from the inside out.
While it was still morning, they took a walk in silence. She was so excited, she could barely be. He plucked a bit of green and yellow weed from the sidewalk. Looking at her, he placed the weed in his mouth and chewed, sucked. She held out her palm. He plucked a piece and gave it to her. The taste spread on her tongue and sizzled like lemon. He looked at her, his pinky brushed the back of her hand, he looked at the ground, he looked away, his eyes squinting as if staring directly into the sun.
Later, she rubbed his back. He had a strong and clean back. When he rested his weight against her hands, she felt a surge of care so strong, she gasped, and had to rest her forehead against the back of his head. Her fingers pressed into his shoulders, and her mouth found the center of his neck. He had a pale and soft neck that smelled like warmth itself. Warm body of the person she loved. Hair, skin, pulse. Paloma marveled at this scene while living it. She was aware this was an afternoon she would not easily forget. She pressed her lips to the back of his neck: the first kiss.
They kissed throughout the night. She sat in his lap on the dining room chair. He watched her holding him in the mirror. She closed her eyes, letting him look at her, at the two of them, and how they looked together, flushed and swollen, her closed eyes, chin resting on top of his head. They went to bed early, without dinner. She fell asleep with his hand cupping her shoulder.
He said, “Isn’t this special?”
“Yes,” she said, and thought “my sheets are warm.”
In the morning, he woke in regret. Guilt rising and drowning him.
“This is not who I am,” he thought.
She woke beside him in intense happiness. Opening her eyes, she thought: “thank you.” She felt drunk, and warm sunlight fell across her pillow. She turned to face him. He looked back at her as if from a great height. His eyes shone, and she mistook this brightness for a shared feeling. She lifted herself to kiss his forehead.
“Are you okay?”
“You can tell?” he asked.
“You’re quiet,” she said.
He looked at her.
“I feel guilty, like I shouldn’t be here.”
She looked at him, then out of the window. A familiar tearing in the center of her chest.
“Can we go for a walk? Or a hike? To think?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
They looked at one another. She traced his arm. He traced her arm. She looked at him. He reached for her. They began kissing, kissing as a replacement for talking, as a replacement for thinking. She climbed onto his lap. She lifted his shirt. He lifted her shirt. Skin. They rushed to remove the rest of their clothing. She kissed him. He kissed her. He hesitated. She whispered into his mouth, “Just trust me.” He nodded. He kissed her harder. Then slower. They touched, and sighed, she whimpered against his neck, he gasped, and they were not separate anymore.
He laid beneath her, shaking, in a pale sweat for fear of God.
III. Living.
Two birds flew in sync above her, black outlined against the setting sun. Across the street, the eucalyptus trees had been cut down. Pale stupid trunks. Paloma tried calling the monk’s cell but heard only a robot who told her that his number had been temporarily put out of service. She looked around at a still afternoon full of meaningless symbols, and sighed. “I’m living on a fucking chessboard.”
All the time she thought about religion. It was less that she had found God. He had found her, and took from her someone she loved. She pursued God with a hunter’s stare, believing if she could understand God, and His religions, she would know how to bring back her beloved.
“But who am I playing against? Huh? You, God, is it you? Because it’s not the monk. He left. So, it’s you.” She stared at the shorn trees. She stared a dead, long while.
“No, I know. I’m sorry. I know I’m playing against me.”
After. There is an After. Afterlife. After the monk. After the monk ended his relationship with Paloma. After his repentance and rejoining with God. After Paloma and the monk had sex in her wrought iron bed. After she said “If you do not love me, leave, it's okay,” and he replied “I do love you, Paloma” and she said, “I love you too.” After she sipped a tear from his left eye. After disgrace. After he showered to wash her off of him. After she boiled two eggs. After they lay in the sun in silence. After he caught her watching him from the stove and assured her this would not be the last time she saw him. After he burned their letters. After he sent her the ashes. After she wept covered in ash on the steps outside her apartment. After she punched the car door. After she slept on the floor for three days, avoiding her bed. After she gave herself to another, a boy with “MEMENTO MORI” inked center on his throat. After she glimpsed the monk’s face in that boy’s face.
The boy once asked her what she felt when she kissed him. He had left school in the ninth grade, after the death of his best friend. The last ten years he spent in Colorado, teaching skiing and sculpting. Rarely he showered. She liked that he smelled, and that his understanding of the world came from what he knew of his body, and of other bodies.
“Kissing you is like drinking water,” she said. He liked that answer. “Can we play the Question Game?”
“What, like I ask you a question?” he asked.
“And I ask you one.”
“Okay.”
“You first.”
“Okay.” He thought hard, too long, staring at his apartment’s dusty wood floor.
“Okay. This is all I could think of. If you were a bird, would you need your song to be heard by a lot of birds? Or just one?”
She smiled. “Just one. How about you?”
“I think,” he glanced sideways, “I think I would need a lot of birds to hear my song. If I was a bird.”
“That’s okay. That’s good.”
He looked away, filling up with something coming from himself. “Yeah, if I was a bird I’d sing really loud.”
IIII. Living
And above them, the steadfast sun.
R. Scott