T.M. Hanson

Below is an excerpt from my main WIP- In Want of a Wife. It’s the last part of a journal entry written by Yvonne, the main character. This chapter covers the evening she spent at her neighbour’s, listening to Miss Donoghue narrate the Ramayana.

I climbed out and tended to her as well as I could, ensuring she was warm and comfortable. Once I was finished, she reached out and took hold of my wrist, murmuring good night. I could not resist, despite my better judgement- perhaps it was the talk of romance, of luxuriousness, of the true nature of all things, or the evening I had spent listening to her and her only, but I leant over, taking her hand within my own, and I kissed it quite firmly. It is the first time my lips have touched any part of her and it is my shame to admit I lingered. Her skin was exceedingly soft and scented faintly with lavender. For the slightest moment, I thought I might not cease and kiss every inch of her skin, but she smiled so devotedly up at me that I did not have the heart to ruin her, though it was the ruin of me to release her.

She pressed my hand before I did, and I blew out the candles, muttering good night, though she was instantly asleep, curled restfully in her bed. I glanced yearningly in her direction as I left, for I am human, after all. It is this inherent, mortal weakness that induces us to love so ardently and unrequitedly against our better judgement, but it appears that not even Gods are above such failings, as I have now learnt from Bonnie’s tale. Perhaps then, it is divine nature to love and love deeply, despite everything.

It is this thought that rested with me as I lay in bed, thinking upon the night, upon my dearest and upon the tale she had told me, upon the divine that surrounds us all, though we know it not. Not truly. Nature, the animals themselves, including our own fragile species, a gift from God; the replenishment and cleansing that comes from the Ganga, from the earth itself, and the idea of renewal, impermanence, the cycles of nature, and even our relations to each other, I thought upon it all and I thought of Bonnie. I could not cease in my thinking, one way or another.

How funny to think we all hold some semblance of the divine within us, from the mould of earth we are created from, the water we drink, the ground we walk upon, the air we breathe, all of it an extension of the Gods, and when we choose to simply live and to live among others, who reflect their own version of divinity, we choose to live among the very cosmos themselves. We are constantly evolving in a cycle of regeneration- now, I am human; in death, the earth, the particles that were once me forming into an animal, a tree, or a blade of grass. Once, I may have been a star itself, out in the galaxy beyond, and my dearest would have been one too, the brightest in all the universe. And when we uphold the morals, the responsibility, that we have to one another, we uphold our service to the earth itself and to our Creator, whether there be one or more beyond this tangible veil. They rest in an infinity that we cannot begin to comprehend. And yet, among this infinity of time and space, my path crossed with Bonnie’s and she was right there beside me. And dear Lord, in that very moment, I loved her.

Today, we are alive; another, we will be dust, and in years to come- far beyond a time I can conceive- our physical selves may be traversing the universe together once more, perhaps unaware that we once knew each other, but together, nonetheless, whilst our eternal souls are united in Paradise. How astounding and comforting it is to think that may be so. That in this lifetime and the next, some part of us may always be together. In that moment, dear journal, I believed my love for her was infinite. I knew it was. And it was this precise thought that guided me to sleep at last.