At midnight we enter the woods.
A path made by animals. Patterned by nature. We move the way water obeys gravity. Quiet, stripped of direction, guided by the pull of what awaits.
The trees part to make room. Ferns fold inward without a sound. We remain silent and reverent of the forest. The dogs stay home, asleep. They are safe there.
We walk barefoot. The earth feels warm. The moss carries yesterday’s sun in its body.
She stays a few steps ahead. Pale light flickers across her shoulders, then vanishes. Her shape absorbs moonlight, then returns it in different forms. I keep a polite distance. She doesn't ask me to. I do it for her.
No one watches. If they did, they wouldn’t see us. We are transparent to all but starlight. Only the forest sees us. It feels us. The air embraces our movement as it remembers us together.
We reach a clearing. She lies down. I lower myself beside her. My back rests against the roots of an old cedar. She places her head on my chest. Our breaths synchronize. Her chest rises when mine falls. Fluid rhythm. Slow. Familiar. We become a part of the forest.
We are not lovers anymore. But we still love. Like this, we are together again. We are the shadow of something that once held shape.
We remain silent and embrace. It is then she suggests I visit her.
I close my eyes. The roots under me press through like a second heartbeat. Wind shifts. It carries mixed scents. Damp leaves, cedar oil, soft dirt. Animal. A trace of blood and damp fir. A different, hard smell, I don’t want to smell again.
I fall asleep. A warm sleep. A drifting sleep. Thin, suspended. The kind that allows you to notice the moment without believing in anything else.
When I open my eyes, the clearing is empty. The tree roots hold no impression of her. Only memory. Tree moss fluffs in the wind and settles again. Nothing disturbed. Morning bird songs. Their patterns mechanical, like toys wound and let go.
I walk back to the studio. Light spreads through trees. It doesn’t reach the ground yet. I leave the door open. The dogs stir, then sleep again.
I don’t bother to dress. I make coffee.
I place a block of wood on the workbench. I know its weight before I touch it. I sit. I press a pen to the surface and draw our faces. Memories tangled together in the solitude of love.
I make marks. Dots. Dashes. A pattern emerges. A language from before language. Her rhythm. My rhythm. Our rhythm. The pattern we used to connect with each other.
Together.
Apart.
Together.
Apart.
Carve.
Each cut lands where it belongs.
By mid-morning, shapes form. We are together once more.
Her suggestion consumes me. I imagine her world.
Outside, the trees whisper about us. They’ve seen many things. They remember everything. They keep most of it to themselves.