even the way they say our name.
“Are you happy?” Tomak asks me. In the cave of the blankets his words are muffled and almost lost. But I can hear him even with my ears pressed into pillows. I can hear him even when he doesn’t speak.
“I’m happy,” I say.
“Are you sad?”
“Also sad.”
“Can one be two disparate things at the same exact moment?”
“I think one can,” I say formally, and giggle.
“Tell me why you’re happy. Then tell me why you’re sad. We’ll try and find a middle point.”
“I’m happy because we’ll get married soon. I’m happy because of Peter. I’m sad because the ocean is grey and they said it would be blue again by now. I’m sad because my parents are dead. I’m sad because half of the world is dead. I don’t think there’s a middle point to that.”
“There’s always a middle point,” he says, and he kisses me on the middle of my forehead, in the crease above my nose.
“Then what is it?”
“Every beginning stems from an end,” he says after a moment.
“That’s not true,” I reply immediately. It is one of my favorite things: to prove people wrong.
“In this case, it’s applicable,” he says calmly. It is one of his favorite things to do: to insist.
“Explain it to me.”
“You’re sad about endings and you’re happy about beginnings. In the middle, there is a continuance. A sort of eternal continuance. A continuance of eternity.”
I’m giggling and he’s smiling smugly like he’s half joking and half serious. It’s a weird feeling, when you realize that you love this person in front of you. Love is strange. Love does not last forever and so it must be practiced quickly and with heat like a fast burning fever. And at the end of it you are tired from the sickness but one day you will grow strong again and you will regard your time together as one regards a fever dream. It couldn’t have been true at all but there is truth in everything. There is truth in every lie and there is truth enough in this. If we lived forever no one would stay together forever because we would all fall out of love. But since we do not live forever some love lasts forever because we die before we reach the point where we can no longer stand the other person. When everything they do is like a slow torture to us and even the way they say our name is unbearable.
