Omar, poet, calligraphy student, lover, dips his pen in the night sky, drawing down inky swirls to coalesce on a moon-silvered page. His flowing letters define a slender foot; then a cloud drifts in front of the moon, putting a temporary stop to his work. A warm scattering of desert sand binds liquid meaning to the manuscript’s sandpaper solidity.
*
Manuela lies on her back, inhaling dusk. Blackbirds quarrel goodnight in the blackthorn; her grassy bed returns the absorbed heat of the day to the chilly air as condensation. She turns her head to the left; a rapeseed sea glows honey-scented and golden to the horizon. Her mind’s eye pictures another golden horizon. She holds up her hand; it is transparent in the moon’s cold dawn.
*
Omar chooses his letters carefully, exaggerating their form to give them significance that transcends their curves. He writes from memory, but also from imagination; always at night, when the falcon sleeps and a fingernail moon smiles on his words. His poem melds shape with sound, abstract form with meaning.
*
Manuela recalls how it started with her feet. A buzz of pins and needles that should not have been there. She felt other parts start to change too, shifting as if through space. Sometimes a thought would be suddenly snatched away, irretrievable, yet leaving a shape in her memory. Once, on the bus, an earbud fell out inexplicably; when she went to put it back in, she could barely make out the shape of her ear with her fingertips, and swiftly pulled up her hood in case anyone might notice.
*
Omar writes ‘hip’, the letters curving into the word that is also a body; Manuela stumbles on the stairs. He writes ‘hair’; and she feels the brush of the desert’s breath on her shoulder, the perfumed heat of Arabia pooling in sweat at her breastbone. He writes ‘heart’; and she trembles, hearing her heartbeat not in her eardrums, but distant, elsewhere. ‘Lips’, and she catches her own breath with an involuntary sigh, goes to bite her bottom lip but her teeth encounter only emptiness.
*
Manuela lies on her back in the moonlit garden, inhaling dusk. Omar dips his nib in the desert sky and writes. He writes crescent moons at the base of pale fingernails; he writes tender palms creased with the lines of head and heart, of fate and life, of sun. He writes hands that are neither ivory nor espresso, but some liminal shade; moon-silvered wrists where life pulses with mercurial ink beneath parchment skin.
*
Omar rests his pen, pondering the temperature of her touch. A hand emerges from his manuscript, delicate fingertips seeking his, a cool palm caressing his cheek like the desert breeze at night. A cloud shifts to reveal the fullness of the moon and Manuela steps fully forth; word become flesh upon golden sand that undulates to the horizon. Omar’s mouth smiles, a wide crescent.