Our two heads stare deep into each other’s eyes.

Next to us, our headless bodies sit together with their legs crossed.

Our bodies move toward each other without our heads. I want to touch his hand, but the scene is too intense.

Our bodies are finally close enough. Then our hearts emerge up from our throats. Their round shapes peek out like big red pearls. I feel shot through with arrows.

Ever so slowly, our throats find each other, and our exposed hearts touch.

Light shoots through my limbs and head. The world is a clear morning. All fog dissipates and there we are, Henry and I, standing on a mountain near a stream, eternal.

IN THE AFTERNOON, I READ A BOOK ON the couch. I can barely catch the sentences, I can only imagine Henry’s lips, the history of the entire world in a kiss, various genealogies of flowers blooming each time our mouths touched, how first I smelled lilac, then rose, then hyacinth, wet from the garden.

A knock at the door shatters my trance. I open the door to find Henry standing outside, his hands in his pockets. He flashes a grin when he sees me, but there is a slight fracture to it.

“I had to see you,” he says.

Then I am in his arms, our mouths together, he is holding me as I have never been held, out in the bright light of day. We move into the house, to the sofa, our bodies pressing together in a furious heat. He finally disentangles himself from my limbs and we sit beside each other.

“I have to tell you something,” he says.

He slides his left hand into view. A band of gold glints on the ring finger, and a tear rips through the universe. The planets quit their motion. The seas pause. The clouds hesitate, frozen in the sky. The sun, for a brief moment, does not burn.

“It’s not exactly what it looks like. It’s very complicated between us right now. There’s been no love there for some time now.”

“But you kissed me...”

“I wasn’t expecting to meet you.”

“But what...”

“We don’t sleep in the same bed,” he blurts.

The sentence hangs there. I stare at the curious shape of it, the strangeness. My heart is a cavern, dug out with the shovel of the fact.

“It’s not that I want to stop seeing you,” he says. “I just had to tell you the truth.”

His eyes voltage into mine again. I picture a wife in the distance: She is older, her face sagging, her body collapsing.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asks.

But then our mouths are together. Everything he’s told me is erased by the glow of it, the electric thrill tunneling through me.