Hiker Graham

Even before reading the letter, I was struck dumb; for I knew it was Leucippe’s handwriting.

Just after we arrived, we started walking through a blooming garden. Suddenly a woman in tight shackles fell before our feet. She held a hoe. They’d buzzed her head, and her body was covered in dirt, hidden only by the simplest of garments. “Take pity on me, mistress,” she pleaded, “woman to woman. Once I was free, born that way, but I’m a slave now, as Fate saw fit.”

I noticed what she was up to. “You’re not eating any of your food!” I teased. “It’s like you’re a still-life, painted eating.” “No dish or wine, no matter the expense, could be worth more of my attention than looking at you.” While speaking she kissed me, and I received her kisses. They weren’t unpleasurable. Then, parting, she said, “You’re my snack.”

To lovers, nothing but love is sweet. Eros overtakes the whole of their souls and leaves no space, even for food.

“He has an opportunity,” said Satyros. “He can have the life he’s after while also caring for a woman whose soul burns for him. Aphrodite has done him a great favour. She’s lit a love for him in a woman so striking that upon seeing her you’d think her a statue. She wants him for, I won’t say a husband, but a master, and she’ll give her whole self over to him...”

I watched as my dearest was taken from me. I couldn’t bear it. I charged against the kidnappers’ swords, but one of them cut through my thigh with a machete. I collapsed, falling to the floor in a flood of blood, while they loaded my girl onto a skiff and fled.

Chaireas' love for Leucippe had escaped notice for a long time.

I take her to the longest pier in Canada, where we look out at the water, then the horizon: faded blue islands, mountains, a boat or two. She won’t smile in my pictures. A man asks for a photo. A couple asks for a photo. A couple asks if our food’s good. We blame the attention on my energy, but it’s her, really. I must be something incredible if I get to sit across from her and eat, sit beside her and read aloud. I must be something like comfort or safety or growth. I must be something.

She’s said she wants a mentor. She’s said we’re a shaky pair—a pair!—and have the same shaky hands. I’m an expert shaker. I know everything from nervous twitches to seismic body shifts. These aren’t the things I want to teach her. I want to show her how not to be so small. How to be knowledge. How to be surety. How to read Greek and Latin and Portuguese. How to tie a square knot. How to be a community, to surround herself with love, respect, and need. How to carry the attending pains with an open heart. How to carry an open heart.

I carried her to the bed from the bathtub. Her voice was absent, her shirt see-through soaked. Her eyes were vacant and brown.

“Brown!” The toddler’s talking about his play-doh. “Brown’s such a nice word, isn’t it?” says his father.

She says her eyes are dark brown pits, and her sister’s still ripening hazel. She says I don’t know colours: not vermillion or saffron or mauve. She says I don’t know directions. She loves latching onto these errors of mine, prying at them like they’re her loosening manicure, coming apart at the cuticle. “You hate this, don’t you?” I don’t. I love how she makes me squirm. I love how she weaves her fingers between mine when I drive her home at night, how she fumbles her phone in her off-hand and picks out the saddest songs she’s ever heard. We love her taste. And double-entendres.  

She says I’m Shakespeare’s bear, pursuing her offstage. I can’t say she’s Ophelia. She says we should go to her place. “My bath’s cleaner than yours.” She’s funny, but I won’t laugh for her in these moments. In dreams I’ve seen her slip into baths and buckets and rivers, slip away into pits under the water, her eyes vacant and brown. She says she doesn’t want to slip into something just because it’s easy. Nothing about this has been easy.