“Vrede’s Kiss”

Excerpt from “Remembering Eternity”: “Vrede kissed him neither like a tyro unsure how to form her lips nor like a flirt, whose automatic, routine movements demonstrate her mastery of the art. Their kisses came slowly, their lips lingering in place after making contact. Some invisible quality of calmness emanated from her, causing him to noticeably slow himself as if he were keeping languorous pace with the lengthening notes of an opiated dance piece. They moved together gracefully in a minute choreography of tilting jaws, raised chins, pressed foreheads, nuzzled ears, skimming skin, and conjoined lips. Every action, each change of position or initiation of contact, rose spontaneously, unmotivated by thought; they released the movements of their faces and hands from conscious control and allowed them to be carried by whiffets of inspiration and currents of feeling. Skylar felt as if he were kissing goodness and smoothing gentleness’s hair. To Skylar, Vrede felt so undefiled by the ugliness of the world that his hands could touch her only with the sense of delicate respect one would have holding an ancient Greek cameo.”