—
She was Stephanie, and I was young enough to think she was the whole world entire.
There is a time for a young man, before he knows anything else of a woman, that he believes all and any sustenance he will ever need is in her hand. If he could only glance his fingers past hers, energy immemorial would brim over into his soul, welling up from the deep source of what makes woman so dizzyingly majestic. That hand, and its lovely fingers, and their painted nails, and the enameled skin molded around the tendons beneath and those slightly-raised, slightly-colored veins tracing an ambling path back through her arms and chest to her secret heart. Unknown, unknowable, guarded woman expressed in ten precious digits.
This happy illusion might be maintained up until and even after his hand meets that of his Stephanie. But only just after, and not long after. And then I realized that all I dreamed was not communicated in the accident of our fingers touching. Still Stephanie masked her unread graces under a cover of thick attraction. If not yet satisfied, necessarily there must be more, deeper if one had a mind to dive into that dark well.
I took Stephanie’s hands often until we could feel the groove of the other’s fingers absent between our own. Life became a puzzle missing a piece, entirely unsatisfying though nearly complete. We matched so closely that we forced our edges into the other, ignoring that we were cheating ourselves of the wholeness we sought.
It was about then, though no one can ever be sure of the exact instance of these things, that we, hand in hand, walked away. The love of innocent community shared an inviting glow, but we desired a shadowed corner in which we might enjoy a more closeted society. How narrow our idea of intimacy!
Sometimes it seemed that I was leading. At others, she. Or so I remember. Someone with a mind for it would know who to blame, but I gave that up long ago. Only once did we stop and turn to see the faint point of belonging we left behind. She sat and I think shed a tear for what she lost, lost so willingly. I sat beside her for only a minute to more easily abbreviate what might have turned into a turning point. I would lead her on so that we might find the privacy we were chasing.
And we found it in the dark, dark night of self. Though we shared the darkness for a time, though I cherished the juxtaposition of the nearness of her comfort against the invading cold of the black, though we finally felt the sensuality of reliance on the one and only one we had chosen, though I basked in self-determinism, I was lost. We kept walking away from the light until we could no longer see it or anything else, feeling only the presence of the other.
There was no telling when I lost her. My Stephanie. my stephanie. dear girl, where are you? deprived of my senses for so long, begun with self-banishment from the light, i suppose i never should have expected to feel her absence. i had lost everything else long before. of course i would lose her as well. we must have just kept walking away from the light, but the slightest degree of direction walking outward turns into an infinitude of separation in time. she could be feet away, i suppose, or many miles. or maybe she was never with me. memory gone with all sense. maybe i never felt her hand in mine at all. maybe i’m still wishing for just the briefest tenderness. the least bit of love.
sitting in the dark i am nostalgic for something like the joy impressed in the void of my chest. there must be something like what I seek. i thought to have found all that in stephanie, but our love couldn’t even keep her within shouting distance. and without her body to keep me warm in this starless desert, I doubt that i could have ever hoped she would be enough. she is as lost in the dark as i am. we have no hope. I do not think she was ever my true joy. What could I have missed?
Wait. Between fingers holding a downcast face and through tears beading together, I see something. Something it seems I have not seen since I was just a boy, desperately plumbing the depths of desire for an unsounded belonging.
Light.
The faintest flicker. A flicker all but invisible, crowded by the veiling curtain of the encroaching dark. A flicker emboldened by the presumption of that dark. A flicker all the brighter for it. Only accustomed to utter black could my eyes even distinguish so faint a flicker.
There must be the joy I seek, the joy I left, the joy I willfully abandoned in my self-reliant delirium of youthful desire. There I must go, forsaking the dark with each step. The road is long, but the path is clear. One point in the far-off distance calls me home.
Light! Oh light of lights, I pray that you have seen my darling abandoned to a deeper dark than I thought could be. Shine on her. Give her your warmth. Give her your hope. Call to her as you called to this poor deserter.
Stephanie, walk with me. Walk with me. I will find you as we both come to the light. I will find you only if we both stay true. Our paths will never cross by chance in this vast dark. We can only converge in pursuing the lodestar of life and love. We knew the light once. Its image is developed upon us all the more clearly in the darkness. Now come with me. Leave the dark behind and meet me on the long road home.
To find each other, to have each other, to enjoy each other, to love each other, we must share the light. What marvelous light! What amazing grace! We must share the light!