Indigo Dawn
Alison awoke in the vast expanse of his king-sized bed, felt the morning chill on her face, and exhaled into the silence. Her breath escaped as a whisper of smoke. Was the room so cold? Or, did she just release the remnants of passion? She gazed across his sleeping body at ornate patterns of frost adorning the corners of the window panes. Each snow sliver was exquisitely unique and multiplying. Beauty building upon beauty. She envisioned a delicate doily of ice-lace forming. Flake linking to flake. Eventually, the entire pane would be blanketed in an intricate lattice of crystal threads, and the inhabitants of the room insulated until Winter’s final thaw. Would she be a witness to the unraveling? Question-mark icicles hung from white window casings, wondering, as the indigo light of dawn’s unknown filtered through the rippled spears.
As she lay there, reassured by the rhythm of his sleep, she imagined that they were inside a sparkling snow cave of unknown depths. She envisioned them afloat on an ice berg, wrapped in luxurious blankets, adrift on the milky, glacial-blue waters of the Lake of the Snow Queen. She was royalty. With the zoomed-in lens of her imagination, she discovered their ice berg oasis to be melting in nearly imperceptible increments of time. The fragile bonds between crystals were being dissolved, one by one, by the intensifying heat of their intertwined bodies and the slow-burning amber glow of their mutual desires. It was as if the ice was loosely wrapped in a gauzy illusion of whole. A floating mass of peaceful perfection that cradled the couple in frozen space and time. It seemed they were, in that moment, settled in for a long winter’s fairy tale. Their story remained untitled, for the Snow Queen dared pen only fiction. In anonymity, within questionable reality, dwelled the magic.
In the room, the air was thick with memories of adult scenes played out in the night. Alison’s inhale caught briefly on the contrast between her memory’s slideshow of intimate images, and the innocent drawings that clung to the bedroom walls. Colorful renderings of an idyllic life, crayoned straight from the heart of a child, held in place with yellowing scotch tape, and delivering the message, “I love Dad.” Was it perverse of her to notice this irony? Was guilt justified in squelching her satisfaction? Did defeat dare to outrun hope before daylight had a chance to lay warm hands on their bare skin?
Alison was incapable of visualizing where boundaries lay. She would never fully comprehend the realm of a parent because she was not one. A walled-off world, an exclusive club, illuminated by eternal fires of unconditional love, where instinct was to protect, and purpose was to be a role model for life. Parenthood was an ancient art in which values etched in granite, epic stories, life lessons and the secrets of happiness were handed down through generations. She understood that he would never be fully available to love her, and she knew that she would buckle with shame if she merely entertained the thought of needing. Allison could not relate to the inner emotions of a single father who had finally allowed himself to give in to his own primal needs. Perhaps there was guilt, tinged with shame, temporarily whisked away by a gust of reckless abandon, only to return with remorse. Regret. Or, perhaps he felt only release. Maybe even relief. Dare she wish for hope? They existed together in that moment, inside that imaginary snow cave, but they dwelled in distant worlds. Alison turned her head away from the drawings, diverting her gaze from the undeniable and returning it to the frosted window artwork that lacked permanence. Ice building, ice melting, serving its purpose in seamless stages of ebb and flow. Cycles of life and death negating one another, abandoning time to stand still.
This moment, before speech, a precious gem, the calm before the thaw. Alison inhaled the cold air more deeply than required. Under the layers of blankets, he shifted and stretched. Yawned theatrically. He smiled at her with one eye barely open, and she was soon enveloped in a cocoon of arms and legs. Long, warm, soft, the encircling was complete. She instinctively stiffened with bittersweet muscle memory. Then, remembering the man who held her now, she surrendered to trust. Sank in.
As Alison lay there in the unsure light of dawn, wrapped in unfamiliar contentment, her thoughts replayed the conversation they had had in the middle of the night. She wondered if she was merely listening to the scattered phrases of a half-sleep dream, or if the words he had whispered had been genuine. A gift of a promise had been placed before her. The offer of an endless attempt to unravel her mystery, a quest for clues that would lead to the secret of her surrendering to sensation of skin and soul. He was giving her the gift of his attention, his intention. Devotion.
Why would he choose her for such an adventure, Alison wondered? She was not a sensual being. She had rarely been held willingly for longer than a moment, let alone seduced with eager intensity, and never had she been ravaged voraciously. Yes, she had once heard the words, "I love you," in a way that pierced her heart with light and illuminated her every cell, but only briefly had she accepted their truth with certainty. Her desperate belief in magical memory erasers, complete forgiveness, and second chances, had left her in a chronic state of wondering why. Because she clung so tightly to ethereal glimpses of forever, life passed by as she stood watching and waiting. Long ago, love had stood still before her, and she had walked away in disbelief. Allison held no expectation that love would enter this scene.
Still, his offer was nearly impossible to decline. Her body now suffered from an addiction. Her cravings had intensified to insatiable. Her heightened senses, reasoning mind, and her racing heart, wrestled to resist the tantalizing vapor of his elixir. A pungent potion that rendered her putty in his large, capable hands. If she were to submit completely to its power, the magic cloud of this spell they were under might turn to ice and shatter. The snow white surfaces of their frozen sanctuary would then darken with shadows of complexity.
“It is okay to let the mind go too,” read his script on the imaginary gift card. Alison was tempted. Eat me. Drink me. Allow. Could she? There was a part of her that burned to fall blindly, jump recklessly, off the edge of the ice cavern, with the hope of being caught and rescued by the swirling updraft of love. Stubborn, scared, still she would not allow herself to stumble.
Alison was certain that, when she had gained distance from the source of her desire, the familiar urge to flee would return. Because what she might be experiencing is happiness in that moment, encompassed by his honest hug, she shouldn’t want to lose him. She didn’t want to ruin this perfect snowfall before it even whitened the tips of the trees, but it felt was as if her legs were running, cartoon-like, and she lacked the power to stop them from spinning. Her bare feet were unable to gain purchase on the ice. Terrifying was the thought of growing roots. Settling down? Suffocating. Tortuous was the idea of a long battle waged between constant need and fleeting availability. True love sounded divine, but debilitating. Unavailable. Unattainable. Undesired?
As fortune would have it, attached to his promise was a clause, which stipulated that this offer of loyalty would hold true as she came and went. It was as if he was honoring her claustrophia-induced wander lust and giving her fears the space to breathe. The vow would remain valid where she left it, within the confines of this shared space. She would be free to travel without attachments, light with the absence of armor, untethered by commitment. Opportunity coupled with anticipation and entwined with lust was a powerful cocktail. This gift, offered in whispers in the dark, was impossible to decline. It was a promise to hold at bay any conflicts between body, mind, and heart, by shortening the equation to include only sight, smell, sound, taste. Touch.
It was clear that he had drifted back to sleep. As Alison slid silently out of his bed and gathered her clothes from the floor, she resolved to place her heart in a box and store it in a vault, balancing it atop a dusty container of cherished mementos. She must go, for inside this cave she would soon be deprived of oxygen. When she returned from adventures near and far, perhaps she would give in to the pull of her core and seek out his heat. She would drink in each moment spent tangled in his long limbs, adrift in a space devoid of apprehension. Although she might come to love despite her heart’s confinement, she would choose not to fall. Instead, she would tumble, with the grace of a Snow Queen, onto his king-sized iceberg oasis, and surrender. Submit. Sink in.
Alison closed his front door behind her, quickly brushed the fresh snow from her windshield, climbed into her car and drove away from his simple, grey country home. Eventually, the icy, winding back road relaxed into a dry straightaway. It was a crisp, cold day, and the snow sparkled on either side of the road like a pristine field of diamonds set against a cloudless azure sky. With each passing mile marker, she breathed a little more deeply. Felt a little more free. She had no urge to look into the rear view mirror. She was mesmerized by the sparkling sea of dreams that was unfolding before her. She accelerated, turned up the music, and ceased to restrain a widening smile.