The morning sun eased into the dark night like a yolk river of light, spilling from the horizon where the darkness ran to hide.  Still lying in bed, our bed, the hazy dimness of night became a ghost, as that yolk light seeped inside, brightening the glass window on the east wall. I looked at my husband.  

He always looked the most beautiful, illuminated by the sunrise. The naked of his skin vulnerable and unashamed next to me, the blanket tangled around his legs, exposing the pale of his chest, the dips of his hips leading down to his sex, soft and exhausted from the night before, already fattening up as his body eased closer to wakefulness.  

His blonde hair smashed and pokey, from tossing and turning on the pillows. I felt like Psyche gazing upon Eros. My husband was frowning in his sleep. Like he always does. Not out of anger but out of pension. Even at rest, his face was always frowning. But as he slept, it was a bit less. But only just. His body rose and fell with his breath.   

The room smelled like us. Our bodies, our breath. The sex we'd had the night before was still haunting, lingering, in fragrance alone, like a watchful ghost, clinging to the shadows as the world grew more yellow and bright and less like the comforting shadows of night, as it hugged us, in the sweaty silence as we held each other while being inside each other. 

I raised my hand to hover over his skin, offering my own paleness to the yolk light. I want to touch him, but I don’t want to wake him. He looked so peaceful sleeping. But it would be the last time I could touch him. His was to ship ship out tonight. I glanced at his bag packed by the door. I had helped him pack it. I had ironed his clothes and hung them by the door as well. His best boots were also polished and ready. It was selfish of me to want to steal what could be his last night of restful sleep in our bed. I kept my hand steady, watching the light particles flutter and dance around within the shard of light quickly filling the room. 

As I was focused on looking at my hand, I felt him wake. As he stirred in bed, I glanced back at him, and his eyes were open. I love his eyes, whiskey-brown with the orange of sunset. He was frowning at the light now. The light was caught in the stubble on his face. His facial hair was still something I was getting used to, but was learning it was one of my favorite differences, my skin being soft enough for the both of us. His skin had the ability to grow hard, and have hair in different places than where hair grew in my places.

He didn’t speak, nor did I. Him being awake changed the emotional temperature of the room. And it felt as if time moved faster, or became heavier. My heart went tight with tears; constricting, as if they were overcast clouds preparing for a rainstorm at any moment. The blue of my eyes probably revealed the storm building in my heart, because he reached up and caressed the side of my face. 

His hand was warm, calloused, and comforting. It sent a shiver down my body that sprouted gooseflesh-like fault lines quaking down and through me. I trembled. And I lay back down next to him, cuddled into the curve of his body, my belly taut with life still growing. I felt his hand leave my face to caress my arm and then pressed a reassuring palm on my abdomen.  

Still, neither one of us was speaking.  Like some sort of spell, if we spoke then everything would fall apart in the emotional tide rising in both of us. Instead, our hands reached and caressed and touched and stroked. I let my fingers sink into the warmth of his scalp, his lashes fluttered closed and I watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed his sounds to silence. I felt his hand grip my hip, and his frown changed. I read his face like a favorite book, kneading his scalp, watching him swallow his sounds to silence, but his frown deepened more and more. It feels good; his face told me.

We had learned to read each other’s silences. The early mornings and late nights became our favorite time, the liminal changes from day to night and night to day. It was the most beautiful time of day for me. It was like I could see all of him,  even the parts that he wanted to hide, the parts he liked to hide, and the parts he felt he needed to hide, I could see them fully in the liminal yolk light.  

The threshold’s truth is so brief,  it has no choice but to be honest.

I could see the bestial energy he loved me with when his passion was full. I could taste the magic sleeping in his blood when his hands touched me. I could smell the wind in his name even if no one was speaking it. It was sewn there. And in moments like this, it was laid bare for all to see. Even if that ‘all’ was just me: his wife, his best friend, the mother of his children. 

His hand was running against my thigh. I caressed down his body too, fingered his ear, stroked his neck, rubbed his stubble jawline briefly. I liked him just slightly scruffy, that stubble, the way the slightly red in the blonde caught the light. I felt the strong slightly freckled frame of his shoulders, and his chest, fuzzy with hair also, not a lot, and too blonde to be really visible without your hands to confirm it being there. It wasn’t til my fingers brushed across his nipple that he made an involuntary sound. I looked up at his eyes again, and that subtle softness was there – the flickering sunset light in the whiskey shore of his gaze.  

He nodded. And I rubbed my thumb across his nipple again, harder, and he swallowed the sound this time. But only barely. I still heard the way his breath hitched as his eyes closed and he frowned hard enough for the lines to furrow valleys between his eyes. He turned toward me, and I felt his manhood press against my thigh. And it made my body alert in a way that it had become accustomed – to be ready for his touch, for his depth.  

I wanted to nod for it too, but he curled against me with how my thumb kneaded his nipple. His mouth opened and exhaled a heated breath against my shoulder. He trembled and he lifted a leg to rest atop mine. A kind of sleepy, pouty groan rumbled deep out of him, like a growl of a beast. My sex anointed itself with the amount of ‘yes’ I felt toward him. 

I reached for it – his manhood. It was pressed against his body. My fingers curled around him and his breath inhaled so sharply and so strongly; it felt like fear, combined with how it made him go still and just look at me. His eyes were full of unspoken questions, like what I was going to do next? Was I going to squeeze? Stroke? Or just hold him, warm and hard against my palm feeling the patient rhythm of his pulse, even so far away from his heart. 

I didn’t touch it often with my hands. 

It was probably a new sensation to have my hand on that part of his body, and not his own, I imagined.   

It was harder than I knew it to feel when it was inside me in other ways. And he was so still. He kept swallowing his sounds back, I felt his pulse start to speed up so fast. It made me frown. I didn’t know why, but he felt too afraid or unsure. Or maybe I was. Either way, I let him go. And then he frowned and reached to replace my hand to his hard length. 

My eyes went wide and I looked at him as my hand slowly stroked him. He nodded slowly. And I watched his tongue lick his lips in a way I wanted to. It was a strange craving. To want to lick a man’s lips. Especially when most want to kiss them. But licking is much more intimate than kissing. 

His eyes started to slit as I stroked him again, and again, and again. His body tensed in a way I instantly recognized. So I stroked him faster, and it wasn’t long before he exhaled hard and groaned. His body melted into the pillows and me. My wrist was splattered with the wet of his seed that kept pouring out of him as his body jerked and spasmed. There was more of it than I thought there would be. It puddled onto the quilt beneath and between us.  

He moved his raised leg between mine and I gasped softly, and immediately covered my mouth with my hand, stained with the splash of him. My hips rubbed against his leg, like riding a horse, he watched me, held me, until I creamed into his skin and the pleasure weeping out of me. He rolled closer to hold me to his chest.  

Tears fell finally, I was angry, I didn’t want his last memory of me to be my tears, I tried to turn it to laughter, I tried to think of some happy memory to remind him about but all it did was summon more tears. And the more that flowed out of me into him, the tighter he held onto me. 

My skin held onto the memory of that tight embrace, long after he was gone; off to fight in a war that would rage across the world for years. I was left behind, not able to follow him along those shores. I kept his gentle spirit and his humanity. I kept it folded like a puddle of liminal yolk light, in the quilt of our marriage bed. And every night, I held the memory of him close, watching the sunset, like it was his eyes, fading from the world and folding those left behind into nights of restless sleep.