Remember the days of our first happiness, how strong we were, how dazed by passion, lying all day, then all night in the narrow bed, sleeping there, eating there too: it was summer, it seemed everything had ripened at once. And so hot we lay completely uncovered. Sometimes the wind rose; a willow brushed the window.
But we were lost in a way, didn't you feel that? The bed was like a raft; I felt us drifting far from our natures, toward a place where we'd discover nothing. First the sun, then the moon, in fragments, stone through the willow. Things anyone could see.
Then the circles closed. Slowly the nights grew cool; the pendant leaves of the willow yellowed and fell. And in each of us began a deep isolation, though we never spoke of this, of the absence of regret. We were artists again, my husband. We could resume the journey.