Fiction Friday:
The Book of Micah, Ep. IX

When he’d asked, I told Micah I had always known, yet that was not the whole truth. At the start, in my innocent expectations, I did not fully understand. I believed he desired me as a man is said to want a woman. In the early nights of our union, he seemed to respond readily. While our first physical expressions of love were awkward and halting, I believed that represented nothing more than mutual inexperience. We would learn better to speak the bodily language of love, and I continued to expect our confidence in one another would grow.

Realization dawned slowly. At first, as girls are taught, I put blame on myself. Perhaps I was too critical or I had requested physical congress with a frequency too great for a man who had so many other responsibilities. Micah did, in rare moments of anger, suggest my words and actions influenced his own lack of desire for me.

But the truth arrived as pieces of a puzzle. Scraps of conversation with other women piled high in my mind. Complaints of men’s too frequent requests. Feelings of vulnerability and excitement when bathing or dressing while their husbands stole glances, even bold stares at bare limbs, backs, breasts. Whispered rumors of men who held unconscionable inclinations, meeting one another in secret, always in fear of being caught, facing exposure, ridicule, imprisonment, even death.

With the passing of time, I related more and more to the hiding, the lying, the strength of desire that grew even as its release was denied. The frustration of my experience rose as the flame of hope guttered. I found much common ground with those scorned for seeking only to escape the daily dread of their own lost faith.

Before the tragic anniversary of our avowal ceremony, I was not fully aware how greatly Micah had struggled to participate in our physical love. I searched my memory, looking for clues in the weeks and months and years that had come before. Some hints may have been visible, but I could identify none. Micah finally admitted his disinclination toward my form and a habit of imagining another in our bed to encourage his body to respond. Though I was cut deeply by his actions, I saw, as if for the first time, how severely he was also hurting, living in this place of proscribed desire.

Micah never wished to discuss his days in the dungeon. He once offered me a single vivid description, “I was caught in the bottom of a well, buried in swine dung.” I told him I couldn’t fully comprehend, but I felt the strength of his pain as an unbearable weight in my own chest.

After sharing his story of Balaban, Micah and I engaged in an honesty and an intimacy we had not previously known. I'd asked for all of him, his body, his heart, and his mind. My faith in the vows we'd exchanged to love and honor grew as my husband pursued me, generously offering his attention and reflections and physical expression. Our love blossomed beyond anything I had come to expect or imagine for us.

Over the turn of seasons, from planting to harvest, Micah and I celebrated life and love together as never before. I was overjoyed. And I feared the power of our passion. I was afraid, in its intensity, this deep and nourishing love would not last. Such passion, I worried, simply could not endure.

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