Love Was Hers

Love was a thing. She had not expected that. She’d heard of love, of course, who hadn’t, she’d even hoped to find it, but she hadn’t expected this reality. He was, it could be said, a person in his own right, a man, and what a man, with his own particular history, a life which had been his own; he was someone who undoubtedly had been a baby, a boy, a youth, but now, he was now hers, hers to touch, to smell, to kiss, to…

Her heart was racing, and she leaned against some old stage prop which threatened to fall apart, blushing in the darkness beneath the theatre. He was hers, and that delighted her, but she, she had to admit, had become solely and completely his. Even the thought of him, she smiled, had taken her breath away.

He was, or had become, love. Love could be a thing, have a face, a goofy smile, tell a bad joke, get sick. She had thought of love as—but had she ever thought of love, of love itself? Had she ever considered what terrible forces of nature were at play, ancient realities which were older than humanity itself?

But the face of her lover flashed before her mind’s eye, and these speculative daydreams were nothing. If she had, for all intents and purposes, thrown herself into a raging river that had, history was replete with warnings, dashed fools against cruel and hidden rocks or driven them out to sea to never return, it was done. The riptide had her, and she didn’t know what was up or down anymore. Didn’t care.

If she was drowning, she was drowning in love, and he was love. If she was drowning, she was drowning in him.

Alone, below the theatre, she straightened her usherette uniform and pulled her hair back behind her head. She forced her breathing to slow, filling her chest with air and letting it out in a long sigh; still, beneath her breasts, her heart played a fevered beat that she feared the whole world could hear.

Let them hear, she thought, it does not beat for them.