sub humus

"Forget what kissing feels like," Madeline tells me, our formal introduction, but I am tempted. Dressed in army issue olive, we climb down the hatch inside the missile silo door, knowing months of dark and waiting stand before us.
For a woman she is strong, never talks about her mother or the boys waiting above, only sighs and says she misses her freckles. We take vitamin c pills and I watch the honey in her hair fade. We lack any entertainment but the games that we invent; Madeline's favorite being Guess the Season, mine I Am in Love with You.
"Winter, probably," I say.
"What makes you guess that?" Madeline asks.
"It's a cold, cold war up there."
Madeline lists the landmarks she's seen, a catalogue we know to be final. I am the one man in the world with this knowledge. Intimacy blooms out of this secret, the period looming like my thumb over the button. We sleep underground, missed by our families, answering only to the commander in chief. Picked at random, he told us, as if 300 feet underground isn't enough of a humbling place.
We sleep underground in this silo. Kind of like living in sin, where her habits still seem damn near endearing. We sleep underground, kind of like brother and sister in a hotel room; two beds by each wall and all the space between so hollow, all the sleep sounds at once familiar and foreign. We sleep underground when the alarm goes off, telling us what the night sky so far above used to.
Things change and Madeline contracts lingering eyes, a hunger the rations won't feed. A chain reaction follows. Just like the cascading avalanche waiting at the end of this, our clothes cascade, our hands small avalanches exploring . I feel the most selfish love for anything: that she is becoming me, that I am inside her and a part of her and the chain reactions fill the silo, echo off the warhead.
Sleeping it off, Madeline dreams of a boy building a fence, a boy unaware. I hold her tight and instead of smelling her, I smell us. This was a mistake and even if conditions improve up above, ours will get worse from here, the days longer but colder yet. Once exposed to the sunlight our love will live a half-life, decaying over terra firma and scattering to the four corners. I am the one man in the world with this knowledge, the knowledge of Madeline calm in her sleep. I am the one man in the world with his finger on the button, and I am tempted.