Ash Cloud

They’re still in the information-gathering stage after an hour or two’s delay at the airport—she’s taken the afternoon off work, just to be able to spend as much time with him as possible before he leaves and before she seriously considers that really, she might not ever see him again, she really really might not see him again. There’s too much to do and no one knows anything and there are no answers to their questions: When? Where? How long? He is still holding his boarding pass and squinting up at the flickeringly unhelpful screens when they finally see that there’s no way his flight would be able to leave now. It’s no one’s fault except Iceland’s. While everyone else queues up at the ticket counters and tries to pronounce the unpronounceable they hold hands and run outside to the taxi ranks, back to her house, back together for at least a little while longer.

Days or a week, whatever it was since they met and saw and knew and followed each other to where they now are : in the room that contained the joy, the bed that cradled their new fragile secrets. They whisper and giggle, making cups of tea and taking naps and getting hot buttered toast crumbs all over the pillowcases. The questions they now ask each other have nothing to do with when and how or ways and means, nothing to do with plans at all; they start with “Would you…?” and end, always, again, with “Yes, yes, oh yes.” They watch the news, the pictures of people asleep in the terminals, and hold each other around the waist, their faces buried in each others’ necks. Another couple of days, at least, depending on when they open the airspace. At least another couple of days, maybe more, there’s nothing to be done, there’s no way he could leave, not right now.

The single small light is on, low by the bedside table. She eases out and looks at him for a moment, lets his legs and hair and hands wash through her. He breathes long and low, soft and quiet.

The ash blanket settles over the city, rumpled and tossed to the floor and sleepily pulled back up over two sets of shoulders. She hops over to the window, trying not to wake him, and peers past the curtains. Are those other faces she sees, looking out and looking back towards their beds, out again at the smudge and smoke? She now knows they weren’t the only ones for whom the volcano exploded, the ones who believe that the machinations of the earth are working in belching, burning support of their coincidental loves. Let it spread, she thinks, snuggling against his chest. Let the airplanes stay grounded forever. She closes her eyes, thinks of the single lights, the double happiness, the many prayers for the days to stay as dark as night.