Song for Night

Love Is a Backhanded Stroke to the Cheek

It is a curious experience — to be inside your dream and outside it, lucid and yet sleeping deeply. But in this war so much has happened to make even this seem normal. I dream of Ijeoma and the night I lost my virginity to her. It is true that I had already had sex by then: John Wayne had forced me to rape someone, but that didn’t count. That was sex, rape, this was love; this was choice.

I cannot even tell if this is how it happened or whether my dream is some kind of wish fulfillment. It is the same day John Wayne forced me to rape that woman, and afterwards, while the others gather around a fire to roast a goat, Ijeoma takes me to the river. It is dark down here and I can barely make out her face. She makes me sit by the water and she washes my feet and my face, then she strips off and dives into the water. I watch her move through the dark fluid like it is a second skin. My breath catches in my throat, way back, so it is hard to breathe.

“Come in,” she calls.

I am scared of the dark water and cannot. I know I will die if I get in, but my fear is so irrational I don’t even speak it. I just shake my head.

“Coward,” she says, splashing me.

I laugh and get up. I strip as though I am about to get in the water but I don’t. I sit back down on the dew-damp grass and feel it tickle my skin. This is sensual yet childlike, free and unconcerned. While I don’t feel innocent, and even though I no longer know what that can mean, it seems attainable. Suddenly Ijeoma is standing over me and I look up. In the faint light I see her body — the womanly swell of her hips belying the small buds on her chest. Her skin is wrinkled from the cold water and she is dripping water onto me, each drop falling slowly and with a touch that burns, but I cannot wait for the next drop. She kneels and kisses me. I close my eyes and lose myself in the damp moment. Later, we are dressing and she turns smiling and says: “You should stop fighting now.”

I don’t know what it means. I want to ask her but I can feel myself waking up.