The heat lay heavy over the vineyard, a thick, golden blanket that made the very air seem to drink the light. Shulamith wiped her forearm across her brow, leaving a faint smudge of dust. The grapes hung in dense clusters, their skins tight and purple, waiting for the press. She could hear the distant voices of her brothers arguing about the yield from the lower terraces, their words blurred by distance and the hum of cicadas.
She wasn’t thinking of them. Her mind was miles away, or perhaps only moments away, tethered to a memory that felt more solid than the stone wall she leaned against. Solomon. The thought of his name was a cool spring in the heat. But with it came the old, familiar ache—a longing so deep it felt like a physical hollow beneath her ribs. *If only you were like a brother to me,* the thought formed, not for the first time. *If only I could have found you outside, brought you to my mother’s house, where she could teach me. Then I could kiss you without scorn, and no one would despise me.*
A sigh escaped her, lost in the vineyard’s simmering quiet. Those early days in Jerusalem now felt like a dream woven from spices and song. The palace, for all its cedar and gold, had become a gilded cage. Here, among the twisting vines and sun-baked earth of her family’s land, she was real again. Here, her love was not a spectacle for courtiers, but a secret, fierce truth she carried within her.
She pushed off from the wall, her sandals scuffing the dry soil. The commands she’d given herself in the stillness of the palace chambers returned to her, shaped not as a royal decree, but as a woman’s desperate plea. *Promise me, O women of Jerusalem. Swear by the gazelles and the deer of the field. Do not awaken love until it so desires.* It was a warning born of experience. This thing between her and Solomon was not a game, not a diversion. It was a consuming fire, the very flame of Yahweh. No amount of courtly water could quench it; no flood of royal duty could drown it. If a man tried to buy such love with all the wealth of his house, he would be met with only utter contempt.
She walked slowly between the rows, her fingers brushing the leaves. She remembered him speaking of her as a wall, and herself, with a flash of defiant pride, claiming her breasts were like towers. In his eyes, she had found peace. But peace was fragile. Her brothers had been stewards of her youth, their care sometimes feeling like a prison. *We have a little sister,* they used to say, *and her breasts are not yet grown. What shall we do for our sister on the day she is spoken for? If she is a wall, we will build towers of silver on her. If she is a door, we will enclose her with panels of cedar.*
She understood their protectiveness now, standing in the vineyard they had preserved. But she was no longer that child. She was a wall, and she had found the one for whom her gates swung open freely.
The sun began its slow descent, casting long, languid shadows. The memory of his voice returned, clear as if he stood beside her. *You who dwell in the gardens, companions are listening for your voice; let me hear it.* A faint, private smile touched her lips. He was the keeper of vineyards now, a king tending a different kind of yield. Her own vineyard, this plot of family heritage and personal history, she had kept. But for him? For Solomon, a thousand shekels were his, and two hundred for those who kept its fruit.
But the final words, the ones that echoed in the chamber of her heart, were hers to speak into the gathering dusk. They were not a poem for scribes, but a breath of promise sent northward toward Jerusalem. “Hurry, my beloved,” she whispered to the rustling leaves. “Be like a gazelle or a young stag on the spice-laden mountains.”
The air was cooling. Somewhere, a dove cooed. She turned back toward the house, the weight of the day’s heat lifting. The longing remained, but it was a clean, sharp thing now, a compass needle pointing true. The story wasn’t in the palace halls. It was here, in the waiting, in the tending, in the unwavering certainty of a love that was as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burned like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame. And she would guard it, this vineyard of her heart, until he came.
