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This short short was inspired by the language and imagery of the biblical Song of Songs.

Jacob my love had left me for the garden without telling me he was going. The light in the sky drove him. Before I could take my hand out of the bucket of soapy water in which I was washing the white shirt he loved he was gone out into the garden. I dried my hands as quickly as I could on a towel which I had stained that morning with my tears. Then I looked out through the window into the garden, where the tree with the red flowers was already in bloom. There also was the begonia bush we had planted together with our four hands in the earth the summer before last. Jacob’s plumber hands were large as spades and good at digging up the earth. Also he never tired, he was a man who would keep going until you told him to stop, and even then he would not listen to you until you gave him a kiss on the mouth. Only then would he pause for a second and stare off somewhere into deep space trekking tracks whose tracks would never cross with mine. These were the places I did not ask him about.

He was gone into the garden but I could not find him there. I looked with my eyes but nowhere was there a sign of Jacob. He had not so long before pushed open the screen door and stepped out of our kitchen onto another track he was trekking. I pushed open the door and stepped out of our kitchen of blue tile. The day was a spring day and the breeze blew past the tree whose red blossoms were already blooming and onto my face. The kiss of the wind was the kiss of Jacob from afar, whom I could not see in our garden. I dug in the earth for him, amongst the roots of the begonia bush, but Jacob I did not find.

I went to my first neighbor and asked him if he had seen where Jacob went.

“I have not seen Jacob today,” my first neighbor replied.

I asked my neighbor if at least he had heard Jacob, where he was going.

“Neither have I heard Jacob today,” my first neighbor replied.

I resolved to never again ask him where in the world my love was.

I went to my second neighbor, who lived across the street, and asked her if she had seen Jacob also.

“I saw the print of Jacob’s shoe,” my second neighbor said.

I asked her in what direction the print was pointed.

“I could not see the direction of the print,” she replied. “I saw only the tip of his toe. Besides this, he was a spirit carried on the wind.”

I followed the line the woman’s long nose pointed across the street to the house of my third neighbor.

I asked my third neighbor if he had seen Jacob’s footprints.

“They are in the earth before my doorstep,” my third neighbor said. “They follow the track of the sun as it shall rise in the east on the last day.”

I thanked my neighbor with his brown eyes; they reminded me of the eyes of Jacob who had left me. I went to follow the footsteps of Jacob in the direction of the sun as it shall rise in the east on the last day.

I went to my neighbor across the road and asked if her son had met my love Jacob as he trod the track of the last-day sun.

“My son has not seen Jacob, but they have spoken through the crack in the wall,” my neighbor said. “Jacob told my son he had learned how to mount the mountains and leap over the hills. My son someday will go leaping over the hills with Jacob.”

I thanked the woman with the white veil before her eyes who had seen her son go leaping into the hills with Jacob tomorrow.

I leapt over the city and found myself in the mountains. I was in the valleys, amongst the roses, and I became a rose, a lily of the valley. I heard the voice of Jacob, and he called to me to come and look with him from Amana, and we would look together into our garden.

I looked around me and found myself a flower, I found myself a rose amongst the flowers, and a fig on the tree of figs, and the wine of grapes that were on the vine. I offered myself, a rose, to Jacob for his beholding, and I gave him myself, a fig, to eat, and I yielded him myself, a grape, so that he would have wine to drink. I laid myself down so that he, a young deer leaping, would leap back to me in the field and we would go out of the field and into our garden.

By night I went back into the city because I had searched all the day for Jacob my beloved, who had left our garden to go leaping in the mountains. I lay by night on my bed and scented my bed with spices. Jacob came to me in the night, and his breath was in my ear, and his voice was in my ear, and to me he said, “I am come. Tomorrow we will go into our garden and plant the seeds from east to west in the track of the sun as it shall rise on the last day.”