Five years

"Did you miss me?"

I smiled, feeling her breath on my neck. Her lips pursed and moved forward. She stroked my face with her warm fingers and kissed me on the cheek. Her breath smelled of lavender, her kiss tingled on my skin. Maja looked at me with her dark brown eyes, which darted back and forth between my mouth and eyes.

She opened her lips, exhaled, stretched her knees, held on to my shoulder, and pressed her body against mine: "I missed you too."

Then she broke away from me, tossed her hair, which was as smooth as her skin, back, and went into the kitchen. I followed her, put the money that had shattered my illusion for a moment on the counter, and reached for the coffee cup she pushed toward me to take a sip. The coffee was almost as hot as her hand, which made beads of sweat form on my forehead. For a moment, my tongue was numb, I coughed and watched as she stowed the wad of bills in a drawer.

"You know you don't have to do that."

I raised my hand, waved her off, and reached out to her. She closed the white drawer, came toward me, and the bubble was intact again. I took another sip from the cup, my tongue still numb, dazzled by her green low-cut sweater with long sleeves, in which she wrapped her thumbs.

"So, what do you want to do today?" she asked me as she stopped in front of me and ran her tongue over her lips.

"I was thinking we could go for a walk."

"A walk? In this cold?"

I nodded. "Is that okay?"

"Of course. I'm just surprised."

"Why is that?"

"Well, talking is one thing, but no one has ever wanted to go for a walk with me before."

I shrugged. She smiled and said, "Well then, let's go."

We walked from her apartment along the street toward the lake without saying a word to each other. Although she usually knew how to fill the silence with monologues, we strolled side by side like strangers until we entered the park. Trees rose from the frozen ground toward the sky, fog caught like wool in the bare treetops. The water, dark blue and smooth, reflected the gray sky. In front of a split tree, she slowed her pace, looked around, crossed her arms, and backed away from me. She shrank five centimeters and her chest curved inward.

"Henrik, nothing weird is going to happen, right? You should have told me beforehand."

"Oh yes, I completely forgot that I'm about to drag you behind one of those trees," I said, spreading my hands in front of my face.

She tilted her head and pressed her reddened lips together. "Ha ha, very funny. But seriously, what are you doing here?"

"To spend time with you."

"You know we had a different agreement?"

"I know, now come here," I reached out my hand to her. She uncrossed her arms, came towards me and wrapped one arm around my waist. Then we continued walking.

As the fog grew thicker, I asked her, "But we could also extend it?"

"Do I always have to go for walks with you then?"

"Better, maybe even feed pigeons or seagulls sometime."

"I'm so happy," she cooed. "No birds in sight, too bad."

We turned around. Three fog fronts later, we climbed the stairs to her apartment and sat down on her white sofa.

"Do you want to order something?" I asked, and she nodded.

She ordered a chicken bowl, I ordered a tuna sandwich. When we had placed our order and I put my smartphone away, she got up from the sofa and took a step toward me.

"How much time do we have?"

"Enough."

She pressed her cleavage into my face, ran both hands through my hair, and there it was again, that rush. The swelling of my desire, which I tried to hold back. I didn't want to use her for sex like the other men before me, but everything about her made me weak-willed, so I pulled her onto the sofa with me and freed her from her clothes. Her features dissolved, her body opened up to me. Her circling hip movements made the inside of my head melt. It was as if, naked, she was someone she couldn't be when clothed.

Two orgasms later, the doorbell rang. I paid, then we sat on her couch, our clothes scattered around us like a second carpet. When she had finished eating, she put her cutlery aside, sighed, ran her fingers through her tied-back hair, looked at her watch, and glanced at me. I put the rest of my sandwich on the plate and turned to her.

"That was nice today."

"Do you want to do it again?"

She stroked my cheek. "It's up to you."

I looked into her almond-shaped eyes, which twitched and fixed on a spot on my face.

"Show me your world."

She lowered her hand and pulled back.

"Hmm." She stared at her knees, her face flushed, then said, "I think you need to leave now."

I nodded to myself, reached out my arm to stroke her back as she picked up her clothes from the floor, but pulled it back halfway. I pushed myself up from the couch and grabbed my things. She watched me get dressed, shuffle down the hallway to the door, and leave the apartment without looking back.

Had I gone too far in my efforts to break our agreement? I could have apologized—I should have—but that would have made everything worse. As the door closed behind me, our bond seemed fragile. We were so close and yet so far apart that she could have been my daughter. Maja was a year older than my Sofia. Maybe they would have been friends and she would have visited my daughter back when everything was still intact, when I didn't have to pretend to be happy, until Sofia, yes, until her.

I walked away from the foggy alley and followed the scattered red taillights of the cars. The imprint of the cold doorknob burned in my palm.

Five years had passed since I found her motionless in the bathtub.

Five years in which I had not heard her laughter, had forgotten its sound.

Five years since I've been nothing but cold.

Five years since I last touched Fanny.

Five years in which I stumbled from one intoxication to the next so as not to drown in my grief.

After I found Sofia in the bathtub, it was as if a train had run me over and I had gotten up again, outwardly unharmed. My daughter's innocent body floating in the water as if she were asleep. At first, that's what I thought, then I hoped she was just unconscious, but when I felt her pulse and touched her cool skin, my heart understood.

As I tried for the tenth time to detect a heartbeat, hoping that something had changed, my wife walked through the door. I don't remember her face, what she said to me, what she did, how she felt. I only know that we lifted her out of the water together, covered her body with a towel, and called the emergency doctor, the police, and the fire department.

After Fanny's tears had dried, we watched as the first responders packed our daughter's body into a body bag. The next thing I remember was an undertaker wrapped in a long coat taking off his hat and shaking our hands. The signet ring on his index finger left a blue mark on my hand that hurt when I thought about that day. Later, we learned that she had died of a stroke.

Taken by fate at the age of twenty. Although she was about to go to college and had parents and friends who loved her, she was not allowed to live on. Sofia, who tried to braid her short blonde hair, then decided to let it grow longer, only to cut it off with kitchen scissors the next day when it bothered her while she slept. My daughter, who was always sociable and helpful, who put the well-being of others before her own. Of course, she wasn't perfect, moody, withdrawn, and selfish on many days, but never malicious or unfair. Despite all her facets, her body refused to continue existing. Even though I only remembered fragments of that day, this realization has accompanied me ever since: I hate this life.

A few weeks after her funeral, there were days when it felt as if she was out with friends and would call at any moment to ask if I could pick her up. For those few seconds, the gray inside me brightened until I remembered. That was my problem. I didn't want to remember seeing her pale body floating in front of me, running through the city and recognizing her features in other girls. I just wanted to forget. If I couldn't, the desire to follow her would grow into a monster so powerful that it would devour not only me, but everything around me.

First, it devoured my marriage. We both signed up for therapy sessions, but while Fanny cried less and less from meeting to meeting, I grew increasingly resentful that she was coming to terms with the situation. I didn't understand why she showed the beginnings of a smile again on some days. Didn't she care about our daughter's life? Was her death an acceptable fact that could be dismissed?

These thoughts simmered for a year until one day I came home and found her on the phone with a friend, laughing the same way she had before Sofia's death.

"You never wanted her, did you?"

She burst into tears: "Do you think I'm not grieving? Just because I'm trying to move on doesn't mean I've forgotten her."

Looking back, that was one of those moments when I should have spoken openly and not withdrawn from her. In the end, I stood next to her and watched as she collected her tears in her palms and a tortured smile formed on my lips.

It seemed strange to me, as I had always been sure that I wanted to spend my life with Fanny. But when I heard her laugh that day, I felt hunger rise within me for the first time. A longing for other bodies, which I could only counter with my grief.

That same week, I slept with another woman whose name I forgot. All I remembered was that she had dark blonde hair, smelled of patchouli, and called me "honey." I was consumed by the ecstasy of the flesh, from which I awoke after sleeping with her. An intoxication that, at least for the act of intercourse, erased the death of my daughter from my mind.

I had tried alcohol and other drugs before, but every substance intensified my memories of her. As a result, I felt I had no choice but to destroy my idea of our marriage as "until death do us part."

Fanny let out a scream when I confessed this. Her head vibrated, her blonde hair lay on her shoulders as if electrified. She rocked back and forth, breathing rapidly, pressing her lips together and then releasing them again. She stared at our therapist, who tried to calm her trembling by laying her hands on her. After two more screams and tearing off a chain on her handbag, she got up and left the office as if we weren't there. That same day, my face red with embarrassment, I packed my things and moved temporarily into a hotel. Five years later, I was living alone and, except for a single encounter when I picked up the rest of my belongings, I never saw her again.

I was sitting on my bed when I received a reply from Maja asking if I had offended her with my demand.

"In three days. At Artemis in the city. At midnight."

A brief feeling of lightness came over me, then I asked myself what I was doing here? Meeting a woman half my age. I also reflected on my request: "Show me your world," which I repeated in my mind, shaking my head and blushing. The desire for intoxication was stronger in me than the alternative of staying alone. Then I asked myself if I was so much better than the guys she had had before me.

Three days later, I was walking along the lake and turned into the city towards the club. Yellow-orange light burned on the asphalt, my black coat blended into the darkness, underneath I wore a blue T-shirt, dark jeans, and black sneakers. From a distance, I saw her standing in the middle of a group of people clinking their beer bottles, handing out pills, and washing them down. A sweet smell wafted into my nose. I approached with shorter and shorter steps. How would I introduce myself? What would they think, that she had such an old lover? Wait a minute, what was I to her anyway? I would just say my name, maybe she would take over the talking.

My feet stopped, I took a breath as the group put down their empty bottles and started moving towards the club. Maja stayed behind in the clear night under the glow of a lantern that cast a bright neon light down on her. She buried half her face in her red jacket, her hair falling down her back in long curls.

My insides contracted, my breathing quickened. I closed my hands and opened them. The tip of a blue wool skirt peeked out from under her down jacket, along with black stockings and white sneakers. She shifted from one foot to the other, took out her smartphone, swiped at it, and put it back in her pocket.

It was Maja who had approached me in the bar two months ago, sat with me on the sofa at the end of the evening, put her legs over mine, and moved closer after every sentence. I could have gotten up and left, but instead I put my hands on her waist and pulled her toward me.

I exhaled and walked toward her. She smiled, pushing her upper lip forward slightly.

"There you are at last."

"So cold?"

She looked at me, "Not at all in my clothes."

"I thought so."

"Ha, ha."

"Are your friends inside yet?"

"No idea."

I laughed.

"Come on."

We got in line, paid the cover charge, and checked our jackets. When she took off her down jacket, she stood in front of me in a dark green top.

"So what do we do now?" I asked her. She smiled again, wrapped her arm around mine, and pulled me toward the bar. Monotonous bass vibrations filled my ears. Flashing lights filled the otherwise dark room. People whirled around on the dance floor, lost in themselves. Maja didn't let go of my arm, pulled me past the crowd to the bar, ordered two beers, and when I was about to say that I didn't drink, I realized there was no turning back.

The beer arrived, she paid, clinked glasses with me, looked around, and pulled a plastic bag out of her bra.

"If you're up to something weird, you should have told me beforehand," I yelled at her. She opened her mouth, raised a hand to it, and rolled her eyes. Then she tapped the back of my hand.

I looked at her, frowned, and shook my head.

"Come on," she said, leaning close to my ear. "You wanted to get to know my world, didn't you?"

I felt her breath on my neck, her lips moving against my ear.

"Okay, what is it?"

"Don't you trust me?"

"Yes."

"Then give me your hand."

She placed a tablet that looked like a blue fructose in the shape of a rounded triangle with an imprint in my hand and washed it down with the beer. I watched her put the bottle down, didn't want to be a coward, and did the same.

"Don't look so confused," she said, ruffling my hair as if I were six years old. Maja laughed. After I smoothed my hair, she took my hand, pulled me toward her, leaned on me, and kissed me.

"How long?"

"You'll find out soon enough."

I ordered two more beers, and we clinked bottles. Then she clasped my hand and we squeezed onto the dance floor. Her hair flew over her shoulders as she moved to the swirling bass of the techno music, one bottle in one hand, the other stroking her waist. I watched the people around me, how they all moved differently and yet the same: with wide eyes and smiles plastered on their faces.

I analyzed, learned, adapted, which Maja noticed, opening her lips a crack, pressing her pelvis against mine and then pulling away from me again. When the beer in my hand had adjusted to the ambient temperature, it came: a gentle wave that carried me along, picking up speed. Relief spread through me, pushing everything negative into the background and replacing my armor with a down pillow.

I looked at her. Maja's eyes sparkled in the flickering lights. My heart pounded against my chest in time with the colors. Suddenly, I was more awake than ever, immersed in the moment of rhythm and completely absorbed in her. This woman, who now seemed to me to be the most beautiful in the world, tilted her head back, pushed her upper lip forward, and stretched one arm into the air. The lights pulsed on her skin: purple, green, white, and I danced on, noticing how her nose bounced up and down, her lips opened and closed again, how her hair shone in the flickering colors, her curls spreading out from the ends of her hair, and her expression free of tension.

At that moment, I planned to confess everything to her. Instead, she came up to me, wrapped her arms around my neck, and kissed me. The music fell silent, the taste of dark chocolate spreading in my mouth. I could feel her heartbeat through her top, her breath became my music, her body the safe place I had been looking for. When she pulled away from me, a tear ran down my cheek. I wiped it away, turned my head, but she kissed the spot.

We left the dance floor, ordered two waters at the bar, and Maja pointed to an adjoining room where several cognac-colored leather sofas were lined up. Half of them were occupied, and we settled down on one in the corner. After we sat down, my jaw cramped as if I were cold, and my breathing became heavy. Inner happiness pressed against the walls of my body.

"Chewing gum?"

I nodded. She tapped the back of my hand again, which tingled, and dropped a piece of gum into my sweat-dampened hands. She put one in her mouth too, leaned back, and put her legs on my lap.

"How do you like it so far?"

"I didn't expect anything like this."

"What did you expect?"

"I don't know, at least not something this intense."

She laughed, a muffled, satisfied laugh. Then she stroked my arm and lifted my hand, something she never usually did.

"I hope it's okay if we sit down for a moment. They're a little strong right now, but that will pass."

I touched her face, ran my fingers through her hair. She grabbed my hand and placed it on her head. "Very gently, okay."

I ran my fingers over her scalp, her body relaxed, she murmured "Mhm" and held my free hand tighter.

Meanwhile, I sank deeper into the sofa, my vision narrowing to tunnel vision in which I saw only her, with her dimples on either side and dancing eyebrows. After the light changed from violet to orange and back again, she sat up, reached for her glass of water, and drank it in one gulp.

"Don't forget to drink, or you'll get dehydrated."

I raised a hand in salute, then drank.

Gradually, my field of vision widened again and I emerged bit by bit from the sofa cushions. She sat up, kicked her feet toward the backrest, and leaned her body against me. Her head was only a nose's length away from mine.

"You know, at first I thought it wasn't a good idea to bring you here and show you all this."

"Why, because I'm too uncool?"

"No," she patted me on the shoulder, "because this is mine, all mine."

"Don't you come here with your friends?"

She shook her head.

"They wouldn't understand."

"Hmm, I thought everything was so casual with you guys?"

"Not everyone," she looked past me at the leather of the couch, "besides, I don't have many real friends. Basically, I hate most of them."

"Me too?"

"You especially."

She stroked my chest, her pupils as wide as her irises.

"But there's one thing I'm still interested in."

She tugged at my hair, giggling like she was eight. "What is it?"

"Why did you talk to me back then? Me, the sad figure at the bar, alone, with a beer in my hand. Not exactly very attractive."

She sighed. "Well, that's exactly what attracted me. There was nothing bitter about your sadness, more like something gentle, and I thought that if I was right, at least you wouldn't hurt me."

"Were you high?"

She grinned. "A little, maybe."

I tilted my head, trying to make my eyes bigger.

"Okay, no, I wasn't. I don't know what came over me. I do regret it a little, then I wouldn't have to answer questions like this now."

"It's your own fault for seducing me."

"I seduced you? Sure, now it's the woman's fault again." She ruffled my hair while I laughed until I cried. When I had calmed down and she pulled my hair again, she asked, "But why were you in the bar drinking back then? You never drink otherwise."

"I wanted to remember."

"And what?"

"The death of my daughter."

I put my hand over my mouth, which was faster than my brain.

"I'm sorry."

Images of Sofia's pale body rose before my inner eye. Maja cupped my head in her hands, forcing me to look at her. "Don't think about that now, okay. Look at me, I'm here."

She furrowed her brow. I looked into the black ocean of her eyes, then pulled her toward me before letting everything go. Entire seas seemed to be waiting behind my eyes to break loose. I didn't sob, moan, or scream. This knot that I had been carrying around with me all these years, that had made me shrink inside, liquefied and made its way through my tear ducts. When the streams had dried up, she wiped my cheeks with her sleeves. My face was red, my eyes burned.

I looked at her and said, "Thank you." She touched the tip of my nose again with her index finger. "You can talk to me about it when you're ready. Whenever you want."

I nodded again, then she pulled the bag out of her bra again and tapped the back of my hand again. "Then you'll feel better in no time. Don't worry, they're not too strong, more for dancing."

I felt a kind of heaviness return despite my newfound lightness, and then I understood that she was deliberately putting me in these situations, not the other way around. I opened my hand, she placed the yellow square in my palm, and we washed the pills down with the lukewarm water from my glass.

"Well then, let's get up, I need something new to drink."

We went to the bar, ordered water, drank it, ordered again, changed our chewing gum, and pushed our way through the crowd into the vortex of bass, where the hairs on my chest vibrated. Warmth rose in my body and with it came the lightness that lifted me into the air this time, as if pressing against my body from within.

Maja shone more than before: no sweaty hair, no sign of dark circles under her eyes, nothing to suggest that she had been awake with me all night. Only the curls at the ends of her hair gradually climbed up to her hairline. I closed my eyes and thought about how Sofia used to hold my hand on the way to kindergarten. How I stayed with her for at least fifteen minutes before I could leave her with the other children. I felt the pressure of her fingers, how her laughter penetrated every cell of my body, and then only the image existed.

I opened my eyes, saw Maja forming a smile with her lips, and knew for sure that she was the one I would talk to about it. I pulled her toward me. The places where our skin touched tingled. She clung to my back. Our tongues entwined as if electrified. It was different than before: more intense, more intimate. She moved her mouth to my ear. "Let's go."

We stumbled out of the club, got into a taxi, drove to her place, closed the door behind us, and were already naked when we lay down in her bed. Her eyes, a dark brown ocean that enveloped me, took me in, just like her body, which was no longer demanding, but tender, affectionate, and familiar. I couldn't stop caressing her body, inhaling the scent of lavender, touching the dimples on her face. The taste of dark chocolate on my tongue. Neither of us was playing a role anymore, we just let ourselves go.

We did it until the first rays of sunlight fell through the window. Wrapped in blankets, we sat on her balcony and watched the sun creep over the horizon and up the mountains.

"Now I don't understand."

"What exactly?" I asked as she laid her head on my shoulder.

"That you wanted to get to know me better and I said yes. Somehow I think I know the answer, but I don't know if I want to hear it, you know? After you told me about her death, everything makes a little more sense, and you know what, I don't mind, because you treat me well and today you were very brave," she nudged me in the side, hooked her arm under my raised leg, and crawled closer to me.

"I think the reason I asked you was because you were the first person I didn't have to pretend with. No cheerfulness, no smiles. You were there when I remembered her, twice."

"Sometimes it just depends on the wounds matching."

I kissed her on the top of her head. She sighed, then we fell silent, continuing to watch the sun's path until her head grew heavier and heavier on my shoulder and her body leaned against mine like a laundry bag. I wrapped the blanket around her, lifted her off the floor, and laid her in her bed. A smile played on her lips, which she opened to speak the words in her half-sleep, words from which there was no turning back: "I love you."

With those words, the knot tightened around my limbs again and drew in. My surroundings turned into a dull surface, as if the fog were suffocating the sun. Wasn't that what I had secretly wished for? Love in solitude, where my grief didn't have to pretend. One day, that too will come to an end. Everything changed, this evening the last of its kind. Like a favorite song you hear for the first time and then wear out. The lost moments of our existence, when life passes us by.

I planned to lie down next to her to fall even more head over heels in love with her. The beginning of a new life. Where was all this leading? When I imagined a life with her, I was sure she would hate me more than Fanny, and I realized that over the past five years, this inner core of mine had remained hard and unchanged and would never dissolve. No matter what had happened that night, this knot remained a part of me.

I went into the kitchen and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. "At first, I thought I was only meeting you to get over her death. It was just an excuse not to admit to myself that I didn't feel quite so lonely with you around. Now that I know you love me too, I can't drag you down into my abyss. I can't bear to lose another loved one."

I put the pen aside. The last sentence was almost illegible. I realized that even though we weren't seeing each other anymore, the attraction between us was too powerful. I crept over to her bed and saw her body, wrapped in the blue blanket, rising and falling. My throat swelled; she had already experienced too much pain: first beaten by her father, then used and manipulated by other men for sex. A tear hit my cheek. I blew her an invisible kiss.

Then I slipped into the rest of my clothes, helped myself to her knife drawer, put one that fit in my jacket pocket, and made the decision to go through with what I had been putting off for the last five years. I slammed the door shut and made my way to the lake.

Despite the sun, there was fog on the water. The air burned in my lungs. There was no one in sight, so I stood on the shore, took the knife out of my pocket, watched my reflection in the water, raised my arm, and cut a slit in my arm. I watched as blood dripped into the water. The longing to die like her, closer in death than in life. As I watched the blood dissipate in the water, I caught a glimpse of an alternative perspective on my existence: a life dictated by others, rushing through me. Every day searching for meaning, a reason to go on. My existence was a burden imposed on me by someone else. This heaviness, which was sometimes lighter, sometimes more pronounced, but never disappeared. No one who felt what you yourself felt. Every person with an unchanging core that remained hidden.

And I did this to myself for so long, I thought, rolled up my other sleeve, put the tip to my elbow, and stabbed myself, when someone bumped into me from behind, causing the knife to fall from my hand.

Brown curls protruded from under a green cap. Eyes that were no longer black, but brown-red, looked at me. "You can't just," she said and burst into tears, pushed me again, grabbed the knife and threw it as far as she could into the lake. Then she repeated, "You can't leave me alone, not now." Breathing heavily, she stumbled towards me, hitting me on the shoulders and chest until she had no strength left and collapsed.

A flush rose to my cheeks. I would have left her behind just as Sofia had left me, with the difference that I had a choice. I embraced her, which she initially resisted, lowering her elbows and letting her tears soak into my coat.

"I'm sorry," I said, pushing the sleeve over my arm. Maja clung to me more tightly, her body twitching with every tear that soaked into the wool. She was the answer, right in front of me, but I was too stupid to understand it. As I looked into her contorted face, I realized that if I wasn't living for myself, I should at least try to live for her.

It was all a tempting idea. If she had woken up from the door slamming, I would have had a chance. One last cry for help.

In the few minutes I have left, I lie here in the water. Blood flows from my arms, the cold, at first like a thousand pinpricks, turns into a down blanket. The grief flows out of me with my blood. Everything dissolves, the knot now just a thin thread, making room for the longing for Maja, which pulls at me so strongly that I try to get up. My body no longer obeys me. Her face with its tender smile is all I can think about.

The certainty that I was wrong catches up with me. She was my remedy, the reason I laughed again, and when I think of her now, I know that I would have overcome myself for her. And then I look back.

When did I become like the others: head bowed to the ground, dark circles under my eyes pulling me down? Shouldn't I have been happy for the time I had with her? Life not as a burden, but as an opportunity to leave things better and not just vegetate in my own existence. Instead, we all distract ourselves from our impending death with hedonism. What matters then? What mattered to me?

Maja was my new chance, which I threw away with deep cuts. Since the day I touched her for the first time, it seems to me that I couldn't have decided otherwise. As if the five years were there to postpone this moment. I know that I can never forget Sofia and now Maja either. That I will always carry them with me, that I knew what it would all lead to from the day I first saw them both.

I miss the taste of dark chocolate, her touch, her nose, the way she talks, looks at me, sighs, taps me on the back of my hand. Maybe a life together would have been possible and my feelings for her wouldn't have faded as quickly as they did with the others. All of this is just imagination.

I don't know the truth that now lies ahead of me. Will it be dark or light, redeeming or eternally sad? Was this my chance at paradise and I ruined it? My own hell, or none of the above? An empty cosmos frozen for us in space and time, the present moment in which only chaos reigns. From all this, we try to extract an essence with our religions, philosophies, sciences. The universe, a mystery whose true nature we will never penetrate.

I may be talking nonsense, hypothermic, sleep-deprived, but I have never seen more clearly. I smell lavender, taste the bitter taste of her tongue once more, and sense that there is no salvation for me.

I feel two hands grab my shoulders and pull me out of the water. Brown curls, could it be her brown curls? Warm hands stroking my face, repeating my name. For a moment, there is peace, silence that breaks open the rest of my inner core. I open my eyes and look into the dark brown ocean of my salvation.