And there I am in the mirror: Perfect, smooth waist trimmed in sequins and tulle, perfect makeup, a face like someone else’s face, a magazine face.

“You’re a dream,” my mother exhales, eyes gleaming.

Henry waits at the end of the aisle, I know. I can feel him there, standing next to my father. I stare into the mirror, at the new costume layered over me, camera flashing again and again, my heart suddenly wild with joy.

I KNOW WHAT LOVE IS NOW, AND HOW love likes to behave.

AT NIGHT, HENRY SNORES BESIDE ME. Occasionally, he stops breathing altogether for long moments. Fear makes me softly prod him in the ribs until he fills his lungs with air again. I go on like this all night, pulling him back from the ledge of death.

◆The name Lazarus can be sourced to the Greek Lazaros, meaning “God hath helped”

◆In the Bible, Lazarus is the name of a man who was resurrected by Jesus in one of his most spectacular miracles

◆Lazarus has become a metaphor for rebirth, recovery, and rehabilitation

“LAKES CAN APPEAR OR DISAPPEAR,” Henry says. “It all depends on the levels of groundwater or draughts.”

Then we are naked again, we are making love again, we are never not touching, we are never not making love.

All the history of the world has led up to this, to the rushes of pleasure between us, to our sweats mingling, to our loud call back to the universe.

VISION

I wear a diamond ring on my left hand. Each evening, we come home from work and sit down to a beautiful dinner of roast chicken, vegetables, and glasses of wine.

After dinner, he reaches across the table to squeeze my wrist. Then, we collapse into bed again, exquisitely touching until morning.

I CANNOT SEE BEYOND HIS LIGHT. I cannot see the cracks in the ground or the wife, until one day while I am running errands alone.

It is a quick glimpse: She stands outside of the grocery store with Henry, not touching. His face seems strained in the sun or else my wishful thinking contorts his features. They step into the store.

She is not at all what I pictured: Black hair, sharp nose, full lips, wide hips.

I absorb the full blow of the scene, which takes a left punch to my jaw, shattering bone. I walk home, weeping in agony. Once home, I howl into my pillow as if a shot animal, bleeding from the gut, the red of life rushing out from the hole.

“A SUBGLACIAL LAKE IS A LAKE THAT IS covered by ice,” Henry says.

He touches me then, and the touch is a song which I have heard before and will hear again and again.

NOW WHEN SOPHIA CALLS, HER VOICE strains over the line.

“How’s it going with him?”

Our bodies are constantly in bed, our hands always roving, how do I say it is a drug?