“I realize that.”
As we strolled home, Thasos with us, he kept thinking, elaborating. Something hurt in me. Wasn’t I deluding him? Was there freedom? When he stumbled, I stumbled.
He had been my Phaon. I thought of his encouragement, years ago, when each of us was desperate. That encouragement, that will to help, buoyed me and, talking swiftly, I promised him help, promised closer friendship.
Standing at his door, leaning on his cane, eyelids closed, he recited something heroic and it was my turn to change: my expression must have altered as quickly as his: his sincerity was an answer to mine: I knew he could not see and yet hid my face in my arm. Walking on, I felt he was still in his doorway, trying to see me, trying to understand.
A boy, with a yo-yo, asked me to stop and watch him perform tricks:
“Sappho...I can make it do things,” he cried, dangling his yo-yo over my sandal, climbing it up my robe.
Sparkling eyes laughed and I bent and kissed him.
P
Yesterday, Anaktoria and I walked to a vineyard above the bay, a yard of crumbling walls, twisted, neglected vines, where bees hummed and swallows flicked apricot bellies. It was unduly warm and we threw off our clothes and lay on old leaves, in the shadow of a wall, the waves grumbling behind the stones, coming up, as it were, through masonry and ground.
I noticed her hand in the grass. I noticed my own. It seemed another’s hand. The grass altered its identity. I felt my naked knee, pressing a stone: it seemed another knee although I felt the stone. I thought: nature tries to claim us before we are aware, before we are willing to let her. Swift, she likes to confuse, preparatory to that eternal grasp of hers.