Sacrée, Sacré

We start from the edges and make our way. Inward, her body, haloed in a slow-crashing wave of white, not exactly a holy hue, a sacred shade. More chalky, reminiscent of tooth enamel, of calcium deposits. Partial, shaded such that the essential blue of canvas shines through the arm, which cradles his head to her florid womb. Florid, not metaphorically but truly blooming. We start from the outside and make our

Beneath her habit her blue face–blue of Matisse’s La danse, not blue of suffocation or drowning, which do the same thing inside, you know–her blue face is bent forward, chin between two breasts full as fruit yet shapeless. For some reason I am grateful for their ambiguity–circles with central dots, two pupils cast slightly aleft in modesty, averting eye contact–my gladness sags when I realize the cause of their diversion might be fear of repudiation–and she needs these for her baby, so they keep their life-giving mouths shut and the eyes of the breasts turn their eyes away–imagine: the eyes have eyes themselves, have eyes.

Her lips. Thin and red, the bridge of her nose an undeviating path that settles me in its solemn straightness. And that’s the word–solemn–for her. Eyes: calmly shut, not in ecstasy, rather in sleep as in prayer. Her cheek is the deepest sea, deep as. Her eyelids dusted with pollen, her lashes dark and specked with dust or sand. She might be asleep were it not for her hand on his shoulder–fingers calmly spread, no grip, no tension in her knuckles, perhaps a press of palm but somehow I doubt it, somehow it feels more like a rest, a laying out and bare, a benediction.

And the other hand, bluish at the thumb, blushing to rose at the fingertips where they blend into his neck. And his neck, it’s bronze–no way around it–his jawline Caesar’s, his nose and undereyes green, not of nausea but of reflected light glancing off a pond. His eyes are shrouded in shadow but are shut, or at least cast far downward, in search of his chin or the underside of his chin. And outside her veil flows white and we are pointed inward, below the breasts, beyond the greenish face with his solemn lips and dignified bridge too, turned down. So we arrive at the focal point, at the womb to which they are both drawn, the center of gravity. It is the prayer they share. It is the sea they hear when they listen to shells.

Here, a field of flowers–could have been a bouquet but He planted them into the soil, I see in their vividness. This one, barely budding, reaching up toward a Platonic double that cannot exist, eyes still shut like a newborn, craning, mouth agape. And this one, casting off her petals like unwanted clothing in summer. Spots of red, like drops of blood. Mustard yellow, smiling ones. Pale green of new life–so now we come to understand the father’s pallor–and which reflects the other? Lilacs curl themselves like cursive along the edge of her pale arm. Forsythia peeks behind them, shy of her force, unashamed but timid. All of these flowers, all cry out possible names, aspects that might arise at five, thirteen, twenty-nine. And who are these parents? Any two who are touched by the growth of a single, tiny range of flowers. Sacrée fiancée, sacré fiancé et bébé.