Free Loving Che by Ana Menendez Page A

in our hands. I sleep and wake to his mouth. And then the sharp breath of knowing. He has entered my life to stay, burrowed deep into my lungs so that every gasp will bring me back to today: the pale desert settling its eternity into the far grooves of the earth, without end or design.
    Later, I wake beside him. He sleeps and I watch: His lashes spill over the white skin of his face and I think of beauty that time doesn’t alter, of marble statues that are always cool to the touch, carvings that come to life at night. His month, his mouth, is parted over his straight teeth and the thin hairs from his rebel’s beard curl over his lips. Those lips defiant even in sleep.
    Outside, the shouts of men returning from their labors. The blinds are blue with light beyond the window. Gunfire sounds, or thunder, and then it is quiet again and I am still, listening to a lost bird insisting at the window. And yet he lies, lies still, his breath easy, almost silent, with none of the gasping I will come to know. His arms are bent beside him, fists clenched. I follow his bare chest to where his ribs sink low to the sides. Small bruises mottle the skin on his stomach like leaf shadows on the valley floor.
    I lie close to him, lie still and quiet next to him. In sleep, he moves his arm to embrace me, in sleep he rises again from the dead. Perhaps he dreams of someone else who comes to him in the night. I rest my head on his shoulder, my face in the rise of his chest. I whisper that itdoesn’t matter. That nothing matters. I breathe the moist soft of his beard and listen to the blood pumping beneath the rise in his neck.
    He opens his eyes and watches me, propped on one elbow.

    I move to kiss him, part his lips with my tongue. He murmurs, moves his hand down my spine, down. He pulls me onto his body. I let myself sink onto him. He looks up at me; My love, he murmurs. The light is beginning to fade from a window that now catches our reflection betweenits blinds. I am above him, watching him, this man who is not a hero or a photograph; who is only warm, smelling of moss ground, his body before me, freckled and soft, his skin tacky to the touch with dried sweat. He blinks slowly. He grabs my hair with one hand and pulls. Pulls down, gently, his other hand in the small of my back. He lets go and embraces me, brings me down to him so that I can feel his heart beating now against my chest. He turns me onto my side. He caresses my hair now, moving slowly, the motion of his hand a mirror to the motion of his body. Slowly I return to myself. I follow his movements. We watch one another. His breathing changes. He closes his eyes and draws me close, a great catch in his throat like day’s dying into night. When he speaks again, it is with a voice that comes from worlds away.
    The red in the sky is fading over the city, ebbing away behind the buildings. He says he will be back in two days. If I want to see him. Yes, I want to see him. He doesn’t kiss me. He is back in his uniform, a different man now, sitting in the back of a jeep.
    And this car, I say, where is it from?
    We recovered it from La Cabaña.
    Recovered?
    Yes, he says, we took it back. You can say stolen if that is what you like. To conquer something we need to take it from someone else, he says. And it’s good to say things clearly and not to hide behind concepts that might be misinterpreted.
    The house is almost dark when I return. I change my clothes and wash quickly. I close the blinds, leaving the room dark, and settle into bed. A sudden joy takes me. I make an inventory of my body, discover only pleasant memory in the crook of my knees, in the muscles of my arms. And nothing that could be called guilt. Not even a sand’s worth in the sloshings of my heart.
    The door downstairs opens and then Calixto’s voice is calling up to me. I lie very still. Teresa! His voice outside the door and then suddenly he is standing there in the light of the hallway, his