Of Love and Ghosts

We had made love. Well... we were young, so maybe it wasn't quite as dignified as "making love" yet. But the room was hot and so were we, and we lay under just a sheet in the humid bedroom. Even with the window open, the air was unmoving--cooling now, but still breezeless.

We weren't quite at the point in our relationship of talking all night after we had lain together, and we were far from the point of just rolling over and going to sleep. She only rested with her head on my chest, my arm around her shoulders, both of us bare as the first day in Eden under the sheets, thinking private thoughts into the dark, quiet room.

It was a strangely solitary moment. I couldn't think of anything to say besides the cliche discussion of which of us had or had not been good for the other; maybe there were questions she wasn't ready to ask. Or maybe we were both just reluctant to disturb the night.

My God, it was so quiet. So peaceful and silent, and the air was finally cooling to a fair North Carolina summer night, and we lay together under the sheet, each of us alone in our selves.

Evening became night, and when ten o'clock came on like late evening's afterthought, the bugle began to weep into the night. You can hear it movies a hundred times; you might dismiss it or be annoyed by it, sitting and goofing around with your friends in the barracks. But in the quiet of your own bed out in town with a woman you're not sure yet if you love, your mind reaching long and far, and her thoughts a daring mystery to you...

"Taps" played slowly into the thoughtful night, plaintively. It was so lonely--each note of dignified sadness so painfully lonely. It ghosted through the quiet air and touched my heart; and it hurt. It hurt in a place I didn't know I had, that place where the heart knows things the mind isn't ready for yet. It hurt so bad.

I lay awake long that night, after she had gone to sleep, after the night air turned from warm and humid to cool and damp. I lay awake and my thoughts turned inward, close and deep, trying to find a fig leaf to cover what I was afraid I already knew.

When I finally fell asleep, my cheeks were still wet with tears.