She props herself up on one elbow hair falls mischievous
lengths suddenly illuminated its colour wheat before gleaning the afternoon
light he smiles she laughs poured out in the defiantly green december grass she
is all bare feet and a navy blue patterned dress even as the wind like an
escaped giggle tumbles out and over and shaking the grass he can hear material
pull over the her pale limbs she’s staring at him and he thinks for a moment
she might keep the seasons at bay by ferocity of her smile and her dancing eyes
reflecting blues and greens clouds only move when they are looking at them and
he rambles words a sieve then her voice
ringing out all hammered yellow gold here he cannot remember if he laid down or
if he fell she asks him if all the world is only what he can see he cannot
answer or figure out what she is doing here her head now on his chest listening
hidden heartbeats not so far off there is the noise the indifferent churning
highway that he was sure that would never come to grips with the truth that
there was no such thing as time he feels suddenly shorn the light like a prayer
and while he knows in that moment that he will never understand her or how in
her aura everything even him seems to pulse with tidal waves of resistance or even
why she was laying there beside him in this space between seasons he thinks
perhaps the only great mystery might be why there was no mystery to it at
all.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Leviathan
-I’m not long for this world- she pronounced from her
mismatched ensemble of pillows. Her
eyes, wide and surrounded by the residue of last night’s mascara, stared at him
around a sharp nose, lying casually on vulgar silk purple pillow.
He was sitting at the window, exhaling, a push of the breath, the smoke from his cigarette through the barely opened window. Bleeding back in through the gap was the sound of water pushed between tire and pavement and the casual assault of rain but she knew he had heard him.
She considered repeating herself and opted instead to roll over on to her back and sigh dramatically. He had seen this too she knew, she had continued to watch him as she shifted positions.
He drove the butt of his cigarette into the ash tray, the act seemed brutish to her, she decided it was due to the disparity between his hands, large and strong and the vanquished cigarette.
He had been so tan once, but spring had been long coming and when it did it was not cool and bright as it had been back home. Here the spring was cold and wet, not too terribly different than the fall. She didn’t understand how he could not be cold, his chest bare, propping himself up against the window.
He turned to face her, his eyes dark and blue. Flat. Took her in, and turned back to the window.
-are you trying to imply you’re dying?- his voice and a snap, the window old and wooden being pulled down and into place.
-no.- she said – I just feel liking I’m not going to make it. Like I am going to be gone soon.-
- so you’re implying that you’re dying.- he responded, tone of voice to match the eyes that had come back around to her. He stood there in the bedroom, her grandmother’s carpet propped up under his toes, and his torso, pale and lean rising just a little with each of his slow breaths.
-yes.- she admitted- but you don’t understand.-
-you’re not dying.- and shook his head.
-how do you know?- she was being childish now, she knew it, but she did that sometimes, she felt because it was role relegated to her. She rolled, perched herself up on her elbows, and peered at him her eyes framed by her disheveled close cropped hair.
-I’ve seen someone dying- he said - and you’re not dying.- he looked across the open apartment into the kitchen at something she couldn’t see. She knew he was remembering, she could see it.
-What was that like?- she inquired, he heard the tone of her voice chance, gone was the pitch of the melodrama and he could tell she was concerned
-It was a long time ago.- he started, paused, knowing she would persist, continued- there wasn’t much left of her at the end. She wasn’t a terribly big thing to begin with, but at the end there didn’t seem to be much of her underneath the hospital sheets. You know I don’t remember much about it, except her eyes and the smile that she always had. And then that broke, and I can remember exactly how I felt when it did. I remember that feeling more than I remember her- he quit talking, he was flexing his hands.
-How did she die?- she asked, though she didn’t know why.
-The same way everyone dies. - he said- Scared.-
He was sitting at the window, exhaling, a push of the breath, the smoke from his cigarette through the barely opened window. Bleeding back in through the gap was the sound of water pushed between tire and pavement and the casual assault of rain but she knew he had heard him.
She considered repeating herself and opted instead to roll over on to her back and sigh dramatically. He had seen this too she knew, she had continued to watch him as she shifted positions.
He drove the butt of his cigarette into the ash tray, the act seemed brutish to her, she decided it was due to the disparity between his hands, large and strong and the vanquished cigarette.
He had been so tan once, but spring had been long coming and when it did it was not cool and bright as it had been back home. Here the spring was cold and wet, not too terribly different than the fall. She didn’t understand how he could not be cold, his chest bare, propping himself up against the window.
He turned to face her, his eyes dark and blue. Flat. Took her in, and turned back to the window.
-are you trying to imply you’re dying?- his voice and a snap, the window old and wooden being pulled down and into place.
-no.- she said – I just feel liking I’m not going to make it. Like I am going to be gone soon.-
- so you’re implying that you’re dying.- he responded, tone of voice to match the eyes that had come back around to her. He stood there in the bedroom, her grandmother’s carpet propped up under his toes, and his torso, pale and lean rising just a little with each of his slow breaths.
-yes.- she admitted- but you don’t understand.-
-you’re not dying.- and shook his head.
-how do you know?- she was being childish now, she knew it, but she did that sometimes, she felt because it was role relegated to her. She rolled, perched herself up on her elbows, and peered at him her eyes framed by her disheveled close cropped hair.
-I’ve seen someone dying- he said - and you’re not dying.- he looked across the open apartment into the kitchen at something she couldn’t see. She knew he was remembering, she could see it.
-What was that like?- she inquired, he heard the tone of her voice chance, gone was the pitch of the melodrama and he could tell she was concerned
-It was a long time ago.- he started, paused, knowing she would persist, continued- there wasn’t much left of her at the end. She wasn’t a terribly big thing to begin with, but at the end there didn’t seem to be much of her underneath the hospital sheets. You know I don’t remember much about it, except her eyes and the smile that she always had. And then that broke, and I can remember exactly how I felt when it did. I remember that feeling more than I remember her- he quit talking, he was flexing his hands.
-How did she die?- she asked, though she didn’t know why.
-The same way everyone dies. - he said- Scared.-
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
The wind
His brother was standing off by the water, at the lake, his
back to the sun. He stared at him for a while from the porch, not knowing if he
should join, or interrupt. It occurred to him that he had not taken much time
to see him, to look at him. The wind pushed in off the water, shook the heavy
leaves that hung like fragile ornaments from the trees. His casually blonde
hair it too gently messed. He was looking out at something over the water.
He tried to guess at whatever he was so intent upon, but could see nothing except the shimmer of the retreating sun, and the onset dark of the southern night. He walked through the screen porch, into the choir of the shaking leaves the churning crickets and the door closed quickly behind him in a jarring crash. His brother turned and his eyes were flat and dark. By the time he reached him his brother had turned back to the water.
They stood there like that for some time, shoulder by shoulder looking out at the water that so far as he could tell, had no reason to be looked at.
‘She left.’ His brother said. He had known, or suspected, no known in that way you can know something about someone just by looking at them. He grunted.
‘I’m sorry.’ He said some time later, which seemed not enough to him, but he could not really decide on what else he could say. His brother shrugged. He tried again to see what on the water so held his brother’s attention. There was nothing there by familiar afternoon light so far as he could tell.
‘Do you remember when we were kids? There was this tree that had been split by lightning.’ His brother began unprompted.
‘Yeah’
‘That tree must have been there for years, it was grey and dead where it split, and it had fallen into three parts. You guys used to climb and build. Every hour for every day in those summers. They seemed to last so much longer.’ He grunted again in agreement. ‘One of the sides that fell, was really overgrown, too much to build on. And while you two were building and talking. I would climb through the branches to the very end of that part of the tree. You guys couldn’t do it, you were too big. But I would climb out on to this same long branch. Couldn’t have been more than twenty feet off the ground but man it seemed like I was so high. The sun would go down, just like it is now, and the wind would pick up. And that branch would sway, I would be on it, and I would sway too, and though it always felt like the branch would break, I knew it wouldn’t. I didn’t ever worry I would fall, I would just sway up there.’
‘I never knew you did that.’
His brother shrugged again. ‘I liked the way it felt.’
He turned to look at his brother. ‘What are you looking at out there?’
His brother, his voice carrying his confusion about the question, responded ‘Nothing.’ And after doing so, put his hand on his shoulder, held for a moment and then walked off to the porch that was now empty. He watched him go.
He turned back to the water, to look at it; it was a field of endless ripples, set upon by his brother’s wind. He thought of all the minuscule organism being pushed and throw around, moved by forces beyond their comprehension. How did they endure it? Did they do it gracefully or ignorantly? And he wondered if in the end if it mattered at all.
He tried to guess at whatever he was so intent upon, but could see nothing except the shimmer of the retreating sun, and the onset dark of the southern night. He walked through the screen porch, into the choir of the shaking leaves the churning crickets and the door closed quickly behind him in a jarring crash. His brother turned and his eyes were flat and dark. By the time he reached him his brother had turned back to the water.
They stood there like that for some time, shoulder by shoulder looking out at the water that so far as he could tell, had no reason to be looked at.
‘She left.’ His brother said. He had known, or suspected, no known in that way you can know something about someone just by looking at them. He grunted.
‘I’m sorry.’ He said some time later, which seemed not enough to him, but he could not really decide on what else he could say. His brother shrugged. He tried again to see what on the water so held his brother’s attention. There was nothing there by familiar afternoon light so far as he could tell.
‘Do you remember when we were kids? There was this tree that had been split by lightning.’ His brother began unprompted.
‘Yeah’
‘That tree must have been there for years, it was grey and dead where it split, and it had fallen into three parts. You guys used to climb and build. Every hour for every day in those summers. They seemed to last so much longer.’ He grunted again in agreement. ‘One of the sides that fell, was really overgrown, too much to build on. And while you two were building and talking. I would climb through the branches to the very end of that part of the tree. You guys couldn’t do it, you were too big. But I would climb out on to this same long branch. Couldn’t have been more than twenty feet off the ground but man it seemed like I was so high. The sun would go down, just like it is now, and the wind would pick up. And that branch would sway, I would be on it, and I would sway too, and though it always felt like the branch would break, I knew it wouldn’t. I didn’t ever worry I would fall, I would just sway up there.’
‘I never knew you did that.’
His brother shrugged again. ‘I liked the way it felt.’
He turned to look at his brother. ‘What are you looking at out there?’
His brother, his voice carrying his confusion about the question, responded ‘Nothing.’ And after doing so, put his hand on his shoulder, held for a moment and then walked off to the porch that was now empty. He watched him go.
He turned back to the water, to look at it; it was a field of endless ripples, set upon by his brother’s wind. He thought of all the minuscule organism being pushed and throw around, moved by forces beyond their comprehension. How did they endure it? Did they do it gracefully or ignorantly? And he wondered if in the end if it mattered at all.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Memory
Waking broken light. Barren the space, black sheets. Trembling vertical blinds. A cosmos illuminated, the silent swirling translucent dust, every where, but only visible there in those thrusting bars of white light. Moving over and through a sound, sounds on sounds, a wobbling voice, fluttering paper, and underneath it all a monotone, mechanical scratching.
The dream slipped away from him, tide receding his waking mind unveiled by its departure. His breath was a deep one, akin in sound to the first breath upon breaking the water.
She liked to sleep, the calm. And she awoke each morning reborn. She watched him awaken, the stuttering opening of his eyes. In that moment he did not look reborn she thought, he looked marooned. She put her hand, the flat of her palm to his chest. She did not know why she still did it, reaching out to feel it. It was always absent- when he woke, when he slept, after the collapse of their bodies that occurred in between. Her strange habit and his nonparticipating role in it, her hand searching for the beat of his heart.
'How did you sleep?' she closed her eyes to await the roll of his rumbling voice over her.
'I dreamt' She knew, only when dreaming was he still in his sleep.
Her voice, he thought, was a cat stretching as she asked 'Of what?' He would have lied, natural inclined to avoid combustive conversation, and believing that truth had no business in a morning bed. But he was denied the chance. Before he could he heard her voice again, 'Of whom?'
She did not know why she had extended her inquiry, the second question simply tumbled out of her mouth. Still he could have lied, but he mistook the inertia of her words for intuition.
He tried to remember who it was it he had been dreaming about. He knew her name, it stood steadfast, erect in his mind like a memorial column, a history, their history, storied, wrapping around the syllables of her name. But he could not see her when he thought of her. He had been able to in his dream, but the image, her likeness, had been pull away with the movement of the dreaming waters, the exposing of being awoken.
'A ghost', he responded.
She knew all of his ghosts, reluctant or willing, were women. She was not surprised, simply curious, and so asked who she was. He answered. She thought there was something quite odd in the way he said her name, the way it came out of his mouth, forced, the sounds seemed distant to the him. He said her name like one says the name of ancient places one knows of but has never seen, like places that exist now only in the stasis of history passed.
'Why is she a ghost?'
He ran a heavy hand over his face, his callouses catching on the his skin. She knew this look, this movement of the hand, the veil behind which his eyes would fall, and the churning that would go on in his mind as he sought the words he wanted.
Eventually, 'I can't see her. When I think of her there's no picture, no image to go with the name. I know I knew her, that I had known her well. But I can't remember her.' Those words caught in the minute illuminated debris - as it did, in the air as if it were being kept afloat by the condemning viscous whirl of the ceiling fan. She didn't understand, or she understood but couldn't believe. She could still remember them all, intimate companions. She could still remember the most casual of companions, a friend from a summer camp when she was a child, the look on her first grade teacher's face when she was surprised. She could not imagine not being able to remember someone.
He felt her look at him, peer, squint as if to help the flawed organ focus. He knew she was bothered, he could feel it come off her bare skin, a silent buzz, not bothered simply stirred from her complacent morning centeredness.
'You would know her if you saw her right?' she asked.
'Of course,' he responded and continued through the first sounds of the question blossoming within her,' but knowing isn't remembering'
In that moment she thought she felt it, his heart but it could have been the residue of some far off thunder.
'I think' he began but she cut him off 'Stop, I don't...' trailed off and he did. She rolled over so she could not see the window, closed her eyes, and forced her self to remember.
The dream slipped away from him, tide receding his waking mind unveiled by its departure. His breath was a deep one, akin in sound to the first breath upon breaking the water.
She liked to sleep, the calm. And she awoke each morning reborn. She watched him awaken, the stuttering opening of his eyes. In that moment he did not look reborn she thought, he looked marooned. She put her hand, the flat of her palm to his chest. She did not know why she still did it, reaching out to feel it. It was always absent- when he woke, when he slept, after the collapse of their bodies that occurred in between. Her strange habit and his nonparticipating role in it, her hand searching for the beat of his heart.
'How did you sleep?' she closed her eyes to await the roll of his rumbling voice over her.
'I dreamt' She knew, only when dreaming was he still in his sleep.
Her voice, he thought, was a cat stretching as she asked 'Of what?' He would have lied, natural inclined to avoid combustive conversation, and believing that truth had no business in a morning bed. But he was denied the chance. Before he could he heard her voice again, 'Of whom?'
She did not know why she had extended her inquiry, the second question simply tumbled out of her mouth. Still he could have lied, but he mistook the inertia of her words for intuition.
He tried to remember who it was it he had been dreaming about. He knew her name, it stood steadfast, erect in his mind like a memorial column, a history, their history, storied, wrapping around the syllables of her name. But he could not see her when he thought of her. He had been able to in his dream, but the image, her likeness, had been pull away with the movement of the dreaming waters, the exposing of being awoken.
'A ghost', he responded.
She knew all of his ghosts, reluctant or willing, were women. She was not surprised, simply curious, and so asked who she was. He answered. She thought there was something quite odd in the way he said her name, the way it came out of his mouth, forced, the sounds seemed distant to the him. He said her name like one says the name of ancient places one knows of but has never seen, like places that exist now only in the stasis of history passed.
'Why is she a ghost?'
He ran a heavy hand over his face, his callouses catching on the his skin. She knew this look, this movement of the hand, the veil behind which his eyes would fall, and the churning that would go on in his mind as he sought the words he wanted.
Eventually, 'I can't see her. When I think of her there's no picture, no image to go with the name. I know I knew her, that I had known her well. But I can't remember her.' Those words caught in the minute illuminated debris - as it did, in the air as if it were being kept afloat by the condemning viscous whirl of the ceiling fan. She didn't understand, or she understood but couldn't believe. She could still remember them all, intimate companions. She could still remember the most casual of companions, a friend from a summer camp when she was a child, the look on her first grade teacher's face when she was surprised. She could not imagine not being able to remember someone.
He felt her look at him, peer, squint as if to help the flawed organ focus. He knew she was bothered, he could feel it come off her bare skin, a silent buzz, not bothered simply stirred from her complacent morning centeredness.
'You would know her if you saw her right?' she asked.
'Of course,' he responded and continued through the first sounds of the question blossoming within her,' but knowing isn't remembering'
In that moment she thought she felt it, his heart but it could have been the residue of some far off thunder.
'I think' he began but she cut him off 'Stop, I don't...' trailed off and he did. She rolled over so she could not see the window, closed her eyes, and forced her self to remember.
Friday, August 30, 2013
An Unexpected Puzzle
She was not sure how this had begun.
Nor, was she sure how long it would go on. She had at first thought they would abandon it, the puzzle, forced by the august sun to retreat to a shadier location. But the first drink had come, then the second, and to the quiet percussion of the filling and draining of their glasses the sun had stumbled its way through the sky.
The table they sat across grew and shrank, ignoring laws of reason and physics, it’s size never changing but the space between her and him always was. He was far away now, farther than her arm could reach despite the caress of his calloused palms. Frustrated she abandoned his hand and began to fish through the pieces, a task that was pointless.
He wasn’t disengaged. The slightest sound from her commanded his full attention. And she liked that, the way he would turn and focus on her, bringing to bear all of himself to consider whatever casual remark she made. She would ask him a question and she could almost feel him stop to consider it, he would remain quiet, turn himself to the pile of pieces, select one out, fit it or toss it aside before trying another until without much warning at all his voice would break through the sound of the intercoastal waterline, with an answer.
But in between picking and placing of pieces and those comfortable exchange of words and his gaze would wander and she could feel him sliding away from her. Drifting off to the horizon where begrudgingly the sun retired. It didn’t feel disingenuous his tidal disposition at the table and at their puzzle.
Shake of the wrist, the jingle of stubborn ice cubes, a sigh, and he was up, long strides to the porch where the liquor was. She watched him, his confident walk and his seemingly casual indifference to the gust of wind or troupe of ducks that had taken afternoon refuge near the path to and from the house. He wasn’t long gone and upon his return he fixed her with a smile and it made her nervous for how easily contented that simple gesture made her.
He leaned into the pile, fingering through the pieces, seeming to evaluate them by some method that evaded her. He picked one, didn’t even try to place it before tossing it back into the pile. Shifted through them again, picked another, eyed a position in the upper right corner and placed it as if it was meant for that place.
But it wasn’t. She didn’t know how long they had sat there, talking and drinking, enjoying the brief whispers of cool airs that would pop up and over the sea wall, placing pieces- or trying to place- into a puzzle. But it wasn’t a puzzle, when she had opened the box she had found that there were at least four different puzzles within, none of them, she suspected, complete. At the realization, assuming he had notice for it was so obvious, she had thought first to put the puzzle back, yet without saying a word he had carried the cardboard out to the patio.
That had been hours ago, she was sure, and while they made no quick progress into solving it, he kept at it at his lazy pace. There was no hint of frustration in him, no suggestion in his consideration of the impossible puzzle that led her to believe any of it bothered him.
She found herself compelled then to ask him about it. ‘You do realize that this puzzle… it’s not one puzzle, it’s a bunch and these pieces don’t match each other right?’
He turned to look at her, again that smile. There was a slight blur to his eyes but he responded very simply, ‘of course.’
She laughed, though she didn’t know why. She shook her head, her straight blond hair brushing her shoulders as she did. ‘Why doesn’t that bother you?’ He looked at her, right at her, as if he couldn’t make her out, or perhaps like he didn’t know her. ‘It drives me crazy! Why doesn’t it bother you?’
‘It never occurred to me that it was necessary that they matched’
Nor, was she sure how long it would go on. She had at first thought they would abandon it, the puzzle, forced by the august sun to retreat to a shadier location. But the first drink had come, then the second, and to the quiet percussion of the filling and draining of their glasses the sun had stumbled its way through the sky.
The table they sat across grew and shrank, ignoring laws of reason and physics, it’s size never changing but the space between her and him always was. He was far away now, farther than her arm could reach despite the caress of his calloused palms. Frustrated she abandoned his hand and began to fish through the pieces, a task that was pointless.
He wasn’t disengaged. The slightest sound from her commanded his full attention. And she liked that, the way he would turn and focus on her, bringing to bear all of himself to consider whatever casual remark she made. She would ask him a question and she could almost feel him stop to consider it, he would remain quiet, turn himself to the pile of pieces, select one out, fit it or toss it aside before trying another until without much warning at all his voice would break through the sound of the intercoastal waterline, with an answer.
But in between picking and placing of pieces and those comfortable exchange of words and his gaze would wander and she could feel him sliding away from her. Drifting off to the horizon where begrudgingly the sun retired. It didn’t feel disingenuous his tidal disposition at the table and at their puzzle.
Shake of the wrist, the jingle of stubborn ice cubes, a sigh, and he was up, long strides to the porch where the liquor was. She watched him, his confident walk and his seemingly casual indifference to the gust of wind or troupe of ducks that had taken afternoon refuge near the path to and from the house. He wasn’t long gone and upon his return he fixed her with a smile and it made her nervous for how easily contented that simple gesture made her.
He leaned into the pile, fingering through the pieces, seeming to evaluate them by some method that evaded her. He picked one, didn’t even try to place it before tossing it back into the pile. Shifted through them again, picked another, eyed a position in the upper right corner and placed it as if it was meant for that place.
But it wasn’t. She didn’t know how long they had sat there, talking and drinking, enjoying the brief whispers of cool airs that would pop up and over the sea wall, placing pieces- or trying to place- into a puzzle. But it wasn’t a puzzle, when she had opened the box she had found that there were at least four different puzzles within, none of them, she suspected, complete. At the realization, assuming he had notice for it was so obvious, she had thought first to put the puzzle back, yet without saying a word he had carried the cardboard out to the patio.
That had been hours ago, she was sure, and while they made no quick progress into solving it, he kept at it at his lazy pace. There was no hint of frustration in him, no suggestion in his consideration of the impossible puzzle that led her to believe any of it bothered him.
She found herself compelled then to ask him about it. ‘You do realize that this puzzle… it’s not one puzzle, it’s a bunch and these pieces don’t match each other right?’
He turned to look at her, again that smile. There was a slight blur to his eyes but he responded very simply, ‘of course.’
She laughed, though she didn’t know why. She shook her head, her straight blond hair brushing her shoulders as she did. ‘Why doesn’t that bother you?’ He looked at her, right at her, as if he couldn’t make her out, or perhaps like he didn’t know her. ‘It drives me crazy! Why doesn’t it bother you?’
‘It never occurred to me that it was necessary that they matched’
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
The Labyrinth
She wasn’t sure when she woke up in the labyrinth. Nor was she particularly sure how long she had wandered down its various hallways. At first she walked without real purpose, she was not alone in the labyrinth- she passed people all the time, most of which seemed to be no more sure than she was of where they were going. She made decisions based off her gut, being completely incapable of deciding why one path might be preferable to another. A right at one fork, a left at another, the third path from the left at a crowded intersection. For some immeasurable amount of time she carried on like that.
Sometimes she felt like she made progress, the labyrinth was not always the same. Some time in the past she had left the portion made of even measured red bricks aligned in some pattern she could not recognize but was sure was there for a section made of high thick green hedges. There had been other sections too. The area of the patterned mosaics, the cut tiles in a seemingly endless collection of shades of blue. The portion made of alabaster white walls with the dirt path. The one she distantly remembered with walls like red clay and flooring of mismatching yellow pebbles. Their relation to each other seem completely arbitrary, and while at first she was sure she was making progress over time she lost her sense of faith that she was going the right way.
A crisis of faith inspired her to change her approach, and she resolved to ask for assistance from the first person that she came across that seemed to know where they were going. This was no easy task, for while the labyrinth was far from empty, the majority of the residents shuffled down the hallways glossy eyed saying little to each other. There seemed to be no wisdom in acquiring the input of someone who seemed to know no more than she did.
Finally she came across someone different. She was not sure if it was because of his age, visible in the stooped nature of his shoulders, his subtle constant hand wringing, and the slow blinking consideration of his clear eyes or if it was the way he sat rather comfortably on a bench between two portions of the labyrinth- the high green hedges meeting new walls, shiny black glass like rock, but for some reason he seemed different than the others.
-Do you know the way?- she asked him.
He looked up to her, he had been staring down the path from which she had just come, considered her with his nearly white blue eyes.
- I do not know ‘the’ way, but I know ‘a’ way.- he responded. She cocked her head and squinted at him. She considered for a second leaving the old man and continuing on until she found someone who had a more emphatic answer but she was impatient, it had taken her quite some time to find this man. She concluded if she came across someone who seemed more knowledgeable that she would simply change guides, and that even if not conclusive, some guide was better than none.
-Will you show me your way?- she asked.
He shrugged, stood up slowly. He loomed over her, turned to face the obsidian hallway and waved her to follow him. She trudged after him.
He took a left at the first fork, as well as the fifth, and the seventh. At an intersection without hesitation he walked to the third path, at the following one he took the second. He walked slowly, and he seemed to drag his feet as he did, a little thing that over time began to annoy her. But at no point in time did he seem to not know exactly where he was going and she swallowed her frustration because of that.
The glassy walls of the hallway had no character, no recognizable features, there were no signs or hints. And she wondered how long it had taken him to learn this path, a small vein of fear rose up in her heart, and for a moment she was very happy to have met this old man.
Suddenly she saw the end of the obsidian hallway, it opened to a wide area. In the wide area to the left was a bench and spread out like directions on a compass were various hallways, each of different colours and themes.
The old man sat down on the bench. She was not pleased.
-Which way do I go?- she asked.
He considered each other paths. Then shrugged and responded -It doesn’t matter-
- How can it not matter?-
- Each path is as good as the next.- he said.
- So they all lead out of here?-
- Out?- there was confusion in his voice, and he squinted at her as he looked at her.
- Yes out! Out! Which path leads out of the labyrinth?-
- None of them of course. - he said. She could hear the confusion in his voice.
- But how do I get out then? Which way do I go? I want to get out of this labyrinth- she stated angrily.
She saw the confusion on his face give way to the softest look of sadness, and with a slight shaking of his head he said - Child, there is no out. The labyrinth is all there is.-
Sometimes she felt like she made progress, the labyrinth was not always the same. Some time in the past she had left the portion made of even measured red bricks aligned in some pattern she could not recognize but was sure was there for a section made of high thick green hedges. There had been other sections too. The area of the patterned mosaics, the cut tiles in a seemingly endless collection of shades of blue. The portion made of alabaster white walls with the dirt path. The one she distantly remembered with walls like red clay and flooring of mismatching yellow pebbles. Their relation to each other seem completely arbitrary, and while at first she was sure she was making progress over time she lost her sense of faith that she was going the right way.
A crisis of faith inspired her to change her approach, and she resolved to ask for assistance from the first person that she came across that seemed to know where they were going. This was no easy task, for while the labyrinth was far from empty, the majority of the residents shuffled down the hallways glossy eyed saying little to each other. There seemed to be no wisdom in acquiring the input of someone who seemed to know no more than she did.
Finally she came across someone different. She was not sure if it was because of his age, visible in the stooped nature of his shoulders, his subtle constant hand wringing, and the slow blinking consideration of his clear eyes or if it was the way he sat rather comfortably on a bench between two portions of the labyrinth- the high green hedges meeting new walls, shiny black glass like rock, but for some reason he seemed different than the others.
-Do you know the way?- she asked him.
He looked up to her, he had been staring down the path from which she had just come, considered her with his nearly white blue eyes.
- I do not know ‘the’ way, but I know ‘a’ way.- he responded. She cocked her head and squinted at him. She considered for a second leaving the old man and continuing on until she found someone who had a more emphatic answer but she was impatient, it had taken her quite some time to find this man. She concluded if she came across someone who seemed more knowledgeable that she would simply change guides, and that even if not conclusive, some guide was better than none.
-Will you show me your way?- she asked.
He shrugged, stood up slowly. He loomed over her, turned to face the obsidian hallway and waved her to follow him. She trudged after him.
He took a left at the first fork, as well as the fifth, and the seventh. At an intersection without hesitation he walked to the third path, at the following one he took the second. He walked slowly, and he seemed to drag his feet as he did, a little thing that over time began to annoy her. But at no point in time did he seem to not know exactly where he was going and she swallowed her frustration because of that.
The glassy walls of the hallway had no character, no recognizable features, there were no signs or hints. And she wondered how long it had taken him to learn this path, a small vein of fear rose up in her heart, and for a moment she was very happy to have met this old man.
Suddenly she saw the end of the obsidian hallway, it opened to a wide area. In the wide area to the left was a bench and spread out like directions on a compass were various hallways, each of different colours and themes.
The old man sat down on the bench. She was not pleased.
-Which way do I go?- she asked.
He considered each other paths. Then shrugged and responded -It doesn’t matter-
- How can it not matter?-
- Each path is as good as the next.- he said.
- So they all lead out of here?-
- Out?- there was confusion in his voice, and he squinted at her as he looked at her.
- Yes out! Out! Which path leads out of the labyrinth?-
- None of them of course. - he said. She could hear the confusion in his voice.
- But how do I get out then? Which way do I go? I want to get out of this labyrinth- she stated angrily.
She saw the confusion on his face give way to the softest look of sadness, and with a slight shaking of his head he said - Child, there is no out. The labyrinth is all there is.-
Monday, July 29, 2013
The last night I spent in Austin Texas
She wasn’t sleeping, though her eyes were closed. They had been laying awake in the drone of the late morning grey light, pouring in from the window above the headboard of their borrowed bed for at least an hour. He had lingered, the alarm for him to leave had already gone off. He could hear the voice of the highway, rolling down US 290, calling him west. But he had stayed when she had awoke and sleepily pulled herself into the space that had opened up in the night between them.
So they lay there, in the room that was quiet except for the sound of the two fans, one overhead and one on the bedside table on his side. Her hair was black lengths of disorder, he played gently with the hair at the nape of her neck. She liked his hands there holding her head, his soft efforts, as she lay close to him. There was safety in the consistency of his familiar last night smells, even here in this place they did not belong, the lingering scent of his cologne and ever-present residue of kentucky bourbon. With his blue eyes peeking shyly behind drowsy eyelids she decided.
-I need to tell you something- she said. Sleepily his raised an eyebrow. She immediately followed with - but I need you to roll over.-
He opened both his eyes then, to take her in. The down comforter had been kicked off the bed last night long before they had fallen asleep, leaving only the tangle of soft shale blue sheets out of which her lovely dark limbs poured.
He then rolled over. For a few moments she did and said nothing.
And without knowing why she reached out and touched him. He felt it, her hand, flat between his shoulder blades, soft and small. She ran her fingers down his spine. Then across his ribs. Immediately he realized she was not scratching his back, each movement was unrelated to the preceding one, arrhythmic and unpatterned. She had not planned on touching him, but she had see the light catch on the lines of his bones and the designs of his so often hidden tattoos, and she had reached out. And as the words she had wanted to say stayed silent on her lips she moved her hand over him. He stopped trying to guess what she was doing and in their borrowed space listened to the voice of her touch. The side of her thumbs over the tops of his shoulder, two finger tips- which two he could not tell- over his side. The base of her palm on the back of neck. A single finger skimming over the top of his ear. The soft grasp of the skin on the side of his hip. She moved her fingers in an unknown dance of finger tips and broken circular movements over his whole back. She stopped for a moment to play with the grey hairs she was so fond of in his short hair. Then she drug her hands, hard, to watch the pink lines they caused. Then as she had started, she placed her hand between his shoulder blades, in the flat space where it seemed to fit so perfectly.
When she moved her hand from that spot he knew she was done. And he lay there silent for a few minutes wishing the fans were not on, wishing he could hear her breathe there behind him.
In time he said -that felt like a story.- And it was quiet, she still hadn’t said what she wanted to say but she hadn’t meant to tell a story.
-what story did it feel like?- she eventually asked. He rolled back over to face her. Her eyes were open now, like always so dark brown her pupils were barely visible. He liked how she looked in the morning, framed in the cascade of her black hair, the small constellation of three freckles on her left cheek. She was beautiful and soft, and every time he told her- which was every time he laid next her- she would laugh and tell him that he always said that.
-there are two people near a cliff, like near a road, and the road is rimmed in a stone wall, like the ones you see on the little mountain roads in the alps. Its foggy and windy like in the morning. One of them is standing on the wall, looking out into the mountains. The other is standing behind them on the road, and is worried. It is windy and they are high up. So they want to reach out and grab the other who is on the wall, to make sure they don’t fall. But the one on the wall is balanced, moving with each push of wind and they know if they reach out to grab them, that force alone might be enough to unbalance them and send them over the edge. So they are paralyzed, pulled in different directions by the forces of affection, fear, and prudence-
She watched him tell the story. He was always telling stories. But when he finished she couldn’t say anything.
He watched her eyes consider him, he knew she had no gift for words and so did not let the silence bother him. They lay there like that for some time- the touch, the story, and the unspoken words rising up like some invisible barrier between them.
He touched her face. She blinked slowly a few times.
-I need to tell you something- he said - but I need you to roll over.-
It took a moment for her to realize that he was serious, but she did eventually push off the sheet and do as he asked. She felt him move, shift his weight down and unexpectedly she felt his breath between her shoulder blades. A soft kiss.
And then she felt him whisper, - I love you too-
So they lay there, in the room that was quiet except for the sound of the two fans, one overhead and one on the bedside table on his side. Her hair was black lengths of disorder, he played gently with the hair at the nape of her neck. She liked his hands there holding her head, his soft efforts, as she lay close to him. There was safety in the consistency of his familiar last night smells, even here in this place they did not belong, the lingering scent of his cologne and ever-present residue of kentucky bourbon. With his blue eyes peeking shyly behind drowsy eyelids she decided.
-I need to tell you something- she said. Sleepily his raised an eyebrow. She immediately followed with - but I need you to roll over.-
He opened both his eyes then, to take her in. The down comforter had been kicked off the bed last night long before they had fallen asleep, leaving only the tangle of soft shale blue sheets out of which her lovely dark limbs poured.
He then rolled over. For a few moments she did and said nothing.
And without knowing why she reached out and touched him. He felt it, her hand, flat between his shoulder blades, soft and small. She ran her fingers down his spine. Then across his ribs. Immediately he realized she was not scratching his back, each movement was unrelated to the preceding one, arrhythmic and unpatterned. She had not planned on touching him, but she had see the light catch on the lines of his bones and the designs of his so often hidden tattoos, and she had reached out. And as the words she had wanted to say stayed silent on her lips she moved her hand over him. He stopped trying to guess what she was doing and in their borrowed space listened to the voice of her touch. The side of her thumbs over the tops of his shoulder, two finger tips- which two he could not tell- over his side. The base of her palm on the back of neck. A single finger skimming over the top of his ear. The soft grasp of the skin on the side of his hip. She moved her fingers in an unknown dance of finger tips and broken circular movements over his whole back. She stopped for a moment to play with the grey hairs she was so fond of in his short hair. Then she drug her hands, hard, to watch the pink lines they caused. Then as she had started, she placed her hand between his shoulder blades, in the flat space where it seemed to fit so perfectly.
When she moved her hand from that spot he knew she was done. And he lay there silent for a few minutes wishing the fans were not on, wishing he could hear her breathe there behind him.
In time he said -that felt like a story.- And it was quiet, she still hadn’t said what she wanted to say but she hadn’t meant to tell a story.
-what story did it feel like?- she eventually asked. He rolled back over to face her. Her eyes were open now, like always so dark brown her pupils were barely visible. He liked how she looked in the morning, framed in the cascade of her black hair, the small constellation of three freckles on her left cheek. She was beautiful and soft, and every time he told her- which was every time he laid next her- she would laugh and tell him that he always said that.
-there are two people near a cliff, like near a road, and the road is rimmed in a stone wall, like the ones you see on the little mountain roads in the alps. Its foggy and windy like in the morning. One of them is standing on the wall, looking out into the mountains. The other is standing behind them on the road, and is worried. It is windy and they are high up. So they want to reach out and grab the other who is on the wall, to make sure they don’t fall. But the one on the wall is balanced, moving with each push of wind and they know if they reach out to grab them, that force alone might be enough to unbalance them and send them over the edge. So they are paralyzed, pulled in different directions by the forces of affection, fear, and prudence-
She watched him tell the story. He was always telling stories. But when he finished she couldn’t say anything.
He watched her eyes consider him, he knew she had no gift for words and so did not let the silence bother him. They lay there like that for some time- the touch, the story, and the unspoken words rising up like some invisible barrier between them.
He touched her face. She blinked slowly a few times.
-I need to tell you something- he said - but I need you to roll over.-
It took a moment for her to realize that he was serious, but she did eventually push off the sheet and do as he asked. She felt him move, shift his weight down and unexpectedly she felt his breath between her shoulder blades. A soft kiss.
And then she felt him whisper, - I love you too-
Monday, April 1, 2013
The Many Resurrections of Ana dos Santos
The light was strange, the nature of its clarity in contrast to the skies which seem emphatically grey. He was nott sure what was real or what was a memory, and he thought to himself that perhaps there was no veil between the two, that perhaps they were always living in the reality of their ever current memory.
Everywhere had felt the storm. But as he stood in the middle of the street that had once run in front of Ana dos Santos's house he realized that something very different had happened here. What had once been here was no more, all that was left was an open expanse of cinder blocks strewn about in the same manner a child discards toys, and the strange sunlight falling in at a diagonal and a memory lurking in the shadows of the hollowed out spaces in the blocks.
His mother’s voice called out to him somewhere from behind but he could not make out her words.
Thirty seven days he had been in love. Ricardo Montevideo. The dark hair he let go, twisting recklessly around his ears and was the feature most people recalled him by in his youth, it was dark as was his skin, an appearance that belied his mixed heritage. Where he grew up he was just another Hispanic boy, but his family could see the specter of the Chaco in his skin tone, that empty sad place from where his mother hailed. He grew up, as all boys seem to, in a parade of names. His mother called him ‘Pato’ a lovingly, chiding reference to his wide set feet, his father called him ‘boy’. To his friends he was ‘Ricky’. There were others, but not least of which was the name he had carried for only the shortest of times- three nights before the storm, Ana had wrapped her hands into his hair and called him ‘Love’.
Memory would blur eventually the brief time they were able to spend together- organization is always a repercussion of hindsight. Looking back Ricardo would never attempt to order the events of his time with Ana, preferring to grasp blindly at the memories, trying not to recall specific moments but instead to attain some manageable hold on the feeling that had filled him up in that time- when he had wove his way through the angelic procession of her laughs and buried himself in her embraces.
He cut his hair when he got home, for the rest of his adult life he would be recalled by his eyes, so dark that the pupils were indistinguishable from the irises. There was no actual ghost that haunted Ricardo, his trouble was born completely of his inability to forget. The romantic will twist this into a resolve of the spirit, a dedication of emotional affection- but Ricardo knew that his problem was that he was plagued by a fanatical forgetlessness. As he continued through his life he met no shortage of people, who’s laughs would ring loudly and who’s skin was softer than any arrangement of words he could ever assemble- but in the back of his mind he would hear her laugh ringing like bells, he would remember the flame that shuddered and rolled through his body at even the slightest of her touches. She was the high water mark of his affection, every other bludgeoning wave falling short, then receding as he recoiled from the impacts that were constant illumination of her absence.
It was not a wound, it did not pulse or ache or cry out for healing. It was simply a gap, a mono tone moan in his spirit. Ricardo tried, at the behest of all of the people who cared for him, to fill it. He tried with school where he studied physics without passion and with only the most mediocre of success. He tried with the supposedly mind expanding drugs that were so fashionable amongst the bare foot unkempt casual fools that lounged about the academic quad but they left him only parched and sore in strange places. He crawled up and down the Riverara pouring vin de pays into the gap. He developed a whimsical gambling habit that consumed all of his father’s meager inheritance yet never for more than a moment silenced him. He spent half a year at the hands of the workers on Enge Kerksteeg. There was no solace for Ricardo in the absence of Ana, except for the fact that the continuity of her absence in time formed a standard of living, a tradition of existence that was akin to solace due to its familiarity.
He married under duress. The weight of expectation, the loneliness of adulthood, impatient toe tapping of his mother, and his unvocalized hope that children might one day due what time and substance could not. His wife took his lack of enthusiasm for his fatherly and husbandly duties in stride, having never known any other man and well equipped with the mindset that usually allows for happy marriages- low expectations. He provided, plying his trade- education in the field of physics, nobly and not without some sort of talent, for he did appreciate that physics, he admitted, ‘explained everything in the world with the exception of Love.’
He abandoned the idea of time. He ceased to measure days or years, an approach that not only rebuked the idea of linear time as was fashionable, but forsook the idea of cyclical time as well. Nothing passed; there was no progression, or reoccurrence. An apathy had formed for all things, a defense mechanism again the absences within his own self. And this philosophical mindset served him well, until the first resurrection.
He was thirty eight when he heard Ana again. He heard her laugh coming from the fifth seat of the fourth row of the class during the third bell. He dropped the pen he was writing with when he heard it. At first he was not sure that it was not the manifestation of the last unhingement of his abandonment of chronology, but when again her laugh rang out he was sure that it was real, and that some how Ana was sitting there in his class. For the rest of the hour he studied her as he went through the motions of a day’s lecture. Oscillating through the classroom to behold her, calling on her to answer a question, looking for a person swept away twenty years earlier in fist of angry water, torn from him by talons of angry wind. She was there though, in the timbre of her voice, the luster of the light reflected in her caramel eyes- Ricardo was sure of it.
She was not of course Ana dos Santos, she was Isabel Mayfleet. He was not insane, he was more than aware that the face did not match. Gone were the endless black ringlets, the comforting round features of her face, the almond shape of Ana’s eyes. Instead Isabel’s hair fell in mismanaged unremarkable brown tresses, her face was angular, cheek bones high, lips thin. Ana had not the face or figure that was unforgettable, Ricardo was able to recall it only after a strained pillaging of his memory, nor was Isabel’s all that memorable. But as the weeks went on, as Ricardo tactfully pried at Isabel he became more and more sure that behind that strange flesh was Ana- awake and living, possessing everything that had made Ana Ana, everything except Ana’s memories and experiences.
To call what happened to Ricardo a revival is to misrepresent how he had lived. So long he had gone through his life with an enthusiasm that reflected the constant monotonous moan inside him that when he seemingly exploded back to life the people in Ricardo’s life thought simply that he had finally arrived. He had never told a soul about the girl who died in the hurricane so many years ago. He rose with vigor, ate hearty meals with an interest that befuddled his doughy wife. His children were too young to analyze the sudden change in their father but enjoyed his new interests in their lives, attending sporting events and being able to recount what had occurred or commenting on new dresses and hair cuts for the first time. His wife, being older and wiser, was suspicious. A surge of energy she would have would have been willing to abide, even would have welcomed, but to walk into onto the porch and find her husband with a glass of wine in hand, staring off at the tree line, singing the words to that old Slowhand song ‘Badge’ was too much. Yet she could not really dind it within her to worry, she knew her husband better than any person alive and she could not bring herself to love him and with his dour features, the knotted brow, the serious mustache, the wings of white forming above his ears there seemed no reason to believe he would have taken a mistress. She could not imagine who would have him.
Ricardo approached his day to day life as he did his memories, as he had before approached his concepts, now shattered- for nothing shatters the illusion of the anonymity of time like the divine revelation of resurrection-, of time, not by thinking but by feel. He knew not what would happen, or even what he wanted to happen. He was not crestfallen by what failed to occur nor did he live on the hope of what might occur. He pursued without purpose or intent Ana, Isabel. He took interest in her music, her pursuit of the upright bass. He took notice one day of the poem she idly scrawled into her notebook, and offered to edit and assist her with it. He did these things though they were ultimately foreign to him, and of no interest to him except for the few extra moments of conversation such efforts provided him, except for the thunderous snaps of her raucous laughter he managed to steal for himself.
Like hearing a song that once moved the soul, her voice brought hidden flush to his arm. That laugh sent trickles of fear and wonder down the length of his spine. Time formed, a measurement based on gaps between the matters that consumed him. One thousand and twenty minutes since he had last seen her- a wave from down the hallway, a thirty five hours since he had last heard her laugh- at some antic of his boyish enthusiasm in class, eleven days since he had seen her wear that red scarf in her hair, cutting the figure of some gypsy heroine. While all of his life reaped the benefit of his resurgence in the end the only thing that mattered to him was Isabel, and Ana reborn in her.
The impossibility of it all never caused Ricardo much trouble. He had no expectations, he could not see into the future. Consumed as he was no thought was given towards the making of plans, aspirations for fulfillment, the creation of a life with Isabel. His lack of forethought manifested itself in a variety of ways but none more poignant than the last. A slip of the tongue one day and he called her ‘Ana’, and he watched, unable to control what would unfold, the air clear between them, like a mist being pulled away. In the back of his head he could hear a coin spin. Isabel was confused, concerned- in that name she had heard an affection that had startled her and the way he had said it, calling her- it had not seemed a mistake or a momentary confusion to who he was speaking. She decided in an instant that it was some sort of pet name, and while strange accepted it, calmed his obvious panic by placing her hand on his. The flame that consumed him, tore through him in an instant was anything but innocent- and he remembered in that moment every urge he had felt those years ago. He pulled his hand back as if bitten and to her hasty goodbye, Ricardo did not even respond.
In broad daylight at an otherwise un-noteworthy three o’clock in the afternoon, Isabel was hit, while walking home as she did everyday, by a drunk driver. They found the old pick up truck embedded in a collapsed telephone pole. They found pieces of Isabel in the lot off the road. The police at the scene mumbled between themselves, mused on the fact that there were no skid marks- they had never seen anything like it, the driver had not even attempted to break. In the following days her peers at the school wept in droves and while the sky filled with a host of warring clouds, there was no rain.
Ricardo stood between the tracks the tires had made, staring at pole which authorities had left in its stricken state. He knew why there was no rain and his eyes noticed without wonder the light from his memory. And while he was miles from the coast and the hour of the day was different, he knew none of that matter. He was not in a place or a time. He was in an event, an event he had known before- the world when Ana died.
A discourse on the descent of Ricardo Montevideo would not do it justice. There was no sense to it, no progression. While it was born of a thwarted passion it was not typified by passionate outbreaks, more that it was an unsystematic capitulation. In the weeks that followed his wife left, with the kids who offered up no protest, to live with her mother. She had found him there on the side of the road the night he had gone out to see the place where Isabel had been struck down. He offered up no explanation for his being there, no response to the inquiry how long he had been there. And in the silences that filled the space between them she concocted a story of lust and unfaithfulness and devotion that was not incorrect in the degree of passion she attributed to it, only incorrect in the fact that she viewed it as a march of shared illicit reciprocal events. Outside of his family life Ricardo crumbled, he ceased to learn his students’ names; his lectures were listless and colourless. Within a few years his employers bemoaned, none too quietly, about their inability to fire him due to the constraints of the tenure system- words upon which hearing Ricardo could not rebuke. At home he ocassionally, broke plates, drank cheap beer, failed to clean his house, constantly missed paying his bills not for lack of funds but for interests in the world at all. He shaved his head leaving his aging now menacing mustache. He wrote senseless agonizing poetry with markers on the living room walls and often fell asleep outside face down in the grass only to be awoken in by his shaking of cold and incrusted with dew. After Isabel died people would remember of Ricardo Montevideo how remarkably lifeless and flat his eyes were.
There is not though any such thing as depthless despair, bottomless anguish. Underneath that chaotic inferno, there is a quiet submission, some sickly close cousin of resolve that is more depraved than surrender, a feeling for which Ricardo could never give a name but that he could feel inside himself like a cold dark lake that swallowed all light and muted sound. The years that slipped by were without number or purpose. And while Ricardo was aware that many people lost people they loved, he was sure that no one in all eternity had lost the same love of their life twice.
He was thumbing the handle of his unadorned cane at a bus stop, waiting as was his habit for a bus to take him down to the shore where he would sit before catching the last bus back to the home he stayed at, dreary in its falsetto mauves the poorly named Bella Vita, when he heard her again. The young woman to his right had laughed. Ricardo had turned in shock to look at her; she had the ripening glow that all young women have to old men, as if they simply emanated life. Her hair was cut close to her head, her ears adorned with large gold hoop earrings. He knew who’s eyes she would have, they were Ana’s and the voice that responded ‘Catalina’ to his inquiry, when he stood and asked about her name, she was no stranger to odd old men at bus stops, was the voice he had remembered.
In that moment almost all the universe ceased to make sense to Ricardo. He knew that he had no understanding of why the life worked like it did, how he could be here, how she could be here again. He knew that he could have no affect on what happened, or did not happen. That the tragedy that would befall him again, and he knew it would, he could not avert, he could not bear it. That he could be again in this place so encumbered and so powerless seemed a great cruelty, except that there was no reason to it and so that cruelty itself became non existent. The madness of existence swirled without end around him; he remained anchored in the center of it by the only force he had ever known that made any sense to him, his love for Ana dos Santos.
When he asked her for a favor, she obliged hearing what it was. It was a strange request and she would have balked, except that she was sure there was something familiar about the old man. There was something about the way he phrased the request, an innocence and a sadness, that removed from it sentiment that would have otherwise be unnerving.
When the police came theyhad questions, for it was not every day that an eight four year old man throws himself into traffic. Catalina had beheld the incident without surprise. Through the assault of screeching breaks and horrified screams, she could only notice how odd the light fell, clear and bright and at an angle in complete contrast to the host of looming grey clouds.
When the police asked her if she had any idea why the old man had done it, she responded with a single word, that word the old man had asked her to say for him, ‘Love’.
Everywhere had felt the storm. But as he stood in the middle of the street that had once run in front of Ana dos Santos's house he realized that something very different had happened here. What had once been here was no more, all that was left was an open expanse of cinder blocks strewn about in the same manner a child discards toys, and the strange sunlight falling in at a diagonal and a memory lurking in the shadows of the hollowed out spaces in the blocks.
His mother’s voice called out to him somewhere from behind but he could not make out her words.
Thirty seven days he had been in love. Ricardo Montevideo. The dark hair he let go, twisting recklessly around his ears and was the feature most people recalled him by in his youth, it was dark as was his skin, an appearance that belied his mixed heritage. Where he grew up he was just another Hispanic boy, but his family could see the specter of the Chaco in his skin tone, that empty sad place from where his mother hailed. He grew up, as all boys seem to, in a parade of names. His mother called him ‘Pato’ a lovingly, chiding reference to his wide set feet, his father called him ‘boy’. To his friends he was ‘Ricky’. There were others, but not least of which was the name he had carried for only the shortest of times- three nights before the storm, Ana had wrapped her hands into his hair and called him ‘Love’.
Memory would blur eventually the brief time they were able to spend together- organization is always a repercussion of hindsight. Looking back Ricardo would never attempt to order the events of his time with Ana, preferring to grasp blindly at the memories, trying not to recall specific moments but instead to attain some manageable hold on the feeling that had filled him up in that time- when he had wove his way through the angelic procession of her laughs and buried himself in her embraces.
He cut his hair when he got home, for the rest of his adult life he would be recalled by his eyes, so dark that the pupils were indistinguishable from the irises. There was no actual ghost that haunted Ricardo, his trouble was born completely of his inability to forget. The romantic will twist this into a resolve of the spirit, a dedication of emotional affection- but Ricardo knew that his problem was that he was plagued by a fanatical forgetlessness. As he continued through his life he met no shortage of people, who’s laughs would ring loudly and who’s skin was softer than any arrangement of words he could ever assemble- but in the back of his mind he would hear her laugh ringing like bells, he would remember the flame that shuddered and rolled through his body at even the slightest of her touches. She was the high water mark of his affection, every other bludgeoning wave falling short, then receding as he recoiled from the impacts that were constant illumination of her absence.
It was not a wound, it did not pulse or ache or cry out for healing. It was simply a gap, a mono tone moan in his spirit. Ricardo tried, at the behest of all of the people who cared for him, to fill it. He tried with school where he studied physics without passion and with only the most mediocre of success. He tried with the supposedly mind expanding drugs that were so fashionable amongst the bare foot unkempt casual fools that lounged about the academic quad but they left him only parched and sore in strange places. He crawled up and down the Riverara pouring vin de pays into the gap. He developed a whimsical gambling habit that consumed all of his father’s meager inheritance yet never for more than a moment silenced him. He spent half a year at the hands of the workers on Enge Kerksteeg. There was no solace for Ricardo in the absence of Ana, except for the fact that the continuity of her absence in time formed a standard of living, a tradition of existence that was akin to solace due to its familiarity.
He married under duress. The weight of expectation, the loneliness of adulthood, impatient toe tapping of his mother, and his unvocalized hope that children might one day due what time and substance could not. His wife took his lack of enthusiasm for his fatherly and husbandly duties in stride, having never known any other man and well equipped with the mindset that usually allows for happy marriages- low expectations. He provided, plying his trade- education in the field of physics, nobly and not without some sort of talent, for he did appreciate that physics, he admitted, ‘explained everything in the world with the exception of Love.’
He abandoned the idea of time. He ceased to measure days or years, an approach that not only rebuked the idea of linear time as was fashionable, but forsook the idea of cyclical time as well. Nothing passed; there was no progression, or reoccurrence. An apathy had formed for all things, a defense mechanism again the absences within his own self. And this philosophical mindset served him well, until the first resurrection.
He was thirty eight when he heard Ana again. He heard her laugh coming from the fifth seat of the fourth row of the class during the third bell. He dropped the pen he was writing with when he heard it. At first he was not sure that it was not the manifestation of the last unhingement of his abandonment of chronology, but when again her laugh rang out he was sure that it was real, and that some how Ana was sitting there in his class. For the rest of the hour he studied her as he went through the motions of a day’s lecture. Oscillating through the classroom to behold her, calling on her to answer a question, looking for a person swept away twenty years earlier in fist of angry water, torn from him by talons of angry wind. She was there though, in the timbre of her voice, the luster of the light reflected in her caramel eyes- Ricardo was sure of it.
She was not of course Ana dos Santos, she was Isabel Mayfleet. He was not insane, he was more than aware that the face did not match. Gone were the endless black ringlets, the comforting round features of her face, the almond shape of Ana’s eyes. Instead Isabel’s hair fell in mismanaged unremarkable brown tresses, her face was angular, cheek bones high, lips thin. Ana had not the face or figure that was unforgettable, Ricardo was able to recall it only after a strained pillaging of his memory, nor was Isabel’s all that memorable. But as the weeks went on, as Ricardo tactfully pried at Isabel he became more and more sure that behind that strange flesh was Ana- awake and living, possessing everything that had made Ana Ana, everything except Ana’s memories and experiences.
To call what happened to Ricardo a revival is to misrepresent how he had lived. So long he had gone through his life with an enthusiasm that reflected the constant monotonous moan inside him that when he seemingly exploded back to life the people in Ricardo’s life thought simply that he had finally arrived. He had never told a soul about the girl who died in the hurricane so many years ago. He rose with vigor, ate hearty meals with an interest that befuddled his doughy wife. His children were too young to analyze the sudden change in their father but enjoyed his new interests in their lives, attending sporting events and being able to recount what had occurred or commenting on new dresses and hair cuts for the first time. His wife, being older and wiser, was suspicious. A surge of energy she would have would have been willing to abide, even would have welcomed, but to walk into onto the porch and find her husband with a glass of wine in hand, staring off at the tree line, singing the words to that old Slowhand song ‘Badge’ was too much. Yet she could not really dind it within her to worry, she knew her husband better than any person alive and she could not bring herself to love him and with his dour features, the knotted brow, the serious mustache, the wings of white forming above his ears there seemed no reason to believe he would have taken a mistress. She could not imagine who would have him.
Ricardo approached his day to day life as he did his memories, as he had before approached his concepts, now shattered- for nothing shatters the illusion of the anonymity of time like the divine revelation of resurrection-, of time, not by thinking but by feel. He knew not what would happen, or even what he wanted to happen. He was not crestfallen by what failed to occur nor did he live on the hope of what might occur. He pursued without purpose or intent Ana, Isabel. He took interest in her music, her pursuit of the upright bass. He took notice one day of the poem she idly scrawled into her notebook, and offered to edit and assist her with it. He did these things though they were ultimately foreign to him, and of no interest to him except for the few extra moments of conversation such efforts provided him, except for the thunderous snaps of her raucous laughter he managed to steal for himself.
Like hearing a song that once moved the soul, her voice brought hidden flush to his arm. That laugh sent trickles of fear and wonder down the length of his spine. Time formed, a measurement based on gaps between the matters that consumed him. One thousand and twenty minutes since he had last seen her- a wave from down the hallway, a thirty five hours since he had last heard her laugh- at some antic of his boyish enthusiasm in class, eleven days since he had seen her wear that red scarf in her hair, cutting the figure of some gypsy heroine. While all of his life reaped the benefit of his resurgence in the end the only thing that mattered to him was Isabel, and Ana reborn in her.
The impossibility of it all never caused Ricardo much trouble. He had no expectations, he could not see into the future. Consumed as he was no thought was given towards the making of plans, aspirations for fulfillment, the creation of a life with Isabel. His lack of forethought manifested itself in a variety of ways but none more poignant than the last. A slip of the tongue one day and he called her ‘Ana’, and he watched, unable to control what would unfold, the air clear between them, like a mist being pulled away. In the back of his head he could hear a coin spin. Isabel was confused, concerned- in that name she had heard an affection that had startled her and the way he had said it, calling her- it had not seemed a mistake or a momentary confusion to who he was speaking. She decided in an instant that it was some sort of pet name, and while strange accepted it, calmed his obvious panic by placing her hand on his. The flame that consumed him, tore through him in an instant was anything but innocent- and he remembered in that moment every urge he had felt those years ago. He pulled his hand back as if bitten and to her hasty goodbye, Ricardo did not even respond.
In broad daylight at an otherwise un-noteworthy three o’clock in the afternoon, Isabel was hit, while walking home as she did everyday, by a drunk driver. They found the old pick up truck embedded in a collapsed telephone pole. They found pieces of Isabel in the lot off the road. The police at the scene mumbled between themselves, mused on the fact that there were no skid marks- they had never seen anything like it, the driver had not even attempted to break. In the following days her peers at the school wept in droves and while the sky filled with a host of warring clouds, there was no rain.
Ricardo stood between the tracks the tires had made, staring at pole which authorities had left in its stricken state. He knew why there was no rain and his eyes noticed without wonder the light from his memory. And while he was miles from the coast and the hour of the day was different, he knew none of that matter. He was not in a place or a time. He was in an event, an event he had known before- the world when Ana died.
A discourse on the descent of Ricardo Montevideo would not do it justice. There was no sense to it, no progression. While it was born of a thwarted passion it was not typified by passionate outbreaks, more that it was an unsystematic capitulation. In the weeks that followed his wife left, with the kids who offered up no protest, to live with her mother. She had found him there on the side of the road the night he had gone out to see the place where Isabel had been struck down. He offered up no explanation for his being there, no response to the inquiry how long he had been there. And in the silences that filled the space between them she concocted a story of lust and unfaithfulness and devotion that was not incorrect in the degree of passion she attributed to it, only incorrect in the fact that she viewed it as a march of shared illicit reciprocal events. Outside of his family life Ricardo crumbled, he ceased to learn his students’ names; his lectures were listless and colourless. Within a few years his employers bemoaned, none too quietly, about their inability to fire him due to the constraints of the tenure system- words upon which hearing Ricardo could not rebuke. At home he ocassionally, broke plates, drank cheap beer, failed to clean his house, constantly missed paying his bills not for lack of funds but for interests in the world at all. He shaved his head leaving his aging now menacing mustache. He wrote senseless agonizing poetry with markers on the living room walls and often fell asleep outside face down in the grass only to be awoken in by his shaking of cold and incrusted with dew. After Isabel died people would remember of Ricardo Montevideo how remarkably lifeless and flat his eyes were.
There is not though any such thing as depthless despair, bottomless anguish. Underneath that chaotic inferno, there is a quiet submission, some sickly close cousin of resolve that is more depraved than surrender, a feeling for which Ricardo could never give a name but that he could feel inside himself like a cold dark lake that swallowed all light and muted sound. The years that slipped by were without number or purpose. And while Ricardo was aware that many people lost people they loved, he was sure that no one in all eternity had lost the same love of their life twice.
He was thumbing the handle of his unadorned cane at a bus stop, waiting as was his habit for a bus to take him down to the shore where he would sit before catching the last bus back to the home he stayed at, dreary in its falsetto mauves the poorly named Bella Vita, when he heard her again. The young woman to his right had laughed. Ricardo had turned in shock to look at her; she had the ripening glow that all young women have to old men, as if they simply emanated life. Her hair was cut close to her head, her ears adorned with large gold hoop earrings. He knew who’s eyes she would have, they were Ana’s and the voice that responded ‘Catalina’ to his inquiry, when he stood and asked about her name, she was no stranger to odd old men at bus stops, was the voice he had remembered.
In that moment almost all the universe ceased to make sense to Ricardo. He knew that he had no understanding of why the life worked like it did, how he could be here, how she could be here again. He knew that he could have no affect on what happened, or did not happen. That the tragedy that would befall him again, and he knew it would, he could not avert, he could not bear it. That he could be again in this place so encumbered and so powerless seemed a great cruelty, except that there was no reason to it and so that cruelty itself became non existent. The madness of existence swirled without end around him; he remained anchored in the center of it by the only force he had ever known that made any sense to him, his love for Ana dos Santos.
When he asked her for a favor, she obliged hearing what it was. It was a strange request and she would have balked, except that she was sure there was something familiar about the old man. There was something about the way he phrased the request, an innocence and a sadness, that removed from it sentiment that would have otherwise be unnerving.
When the police came theyhad questions, for it was not every day that an eight four year old man throws himself into traffic. Catalina had beheld the incident without surprise. Through the assault of screeching breaks and horrified screams, she could only notice how odd the light fell, clear and bright and at an angle in complete contrast to the host of looming grey clouds.
When the police asked her if she had any idea why the old man had done it, she responded with a single word, that word the old man had asked her to say for him, ‘Love’.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Time
She pulled open the sliding glass doors, to feel. The wind running off the water, over the short back lawn, through the doors, and tussling the leaves of the menagerie of openned books, left stranded and marked up, strewn around the living room.
He played music, thumbing through the collections until he found something to his taste, set it spinning under the needle. How many days have we spent like this? She thought pulling back her long unattended brown hair.
She longed for a pair of sweat pants, but knew she would not change from the loose fitting unpatterned dress, she had long given up. That habit, for his penchant for formal dress- He went only so far as to discard the tie and unbotton the top button of his vest, shoes scuffed still worn made sounds on the arachic themed tile floor.
Ice into glass, and then a drink to sip. On he he dangled his drink and reclined into his chair, facing their sea. She poured into the chair near his, cocked at an angle so that ever out of the corner of his eye he could see her. Disobedient hairs teased by the wind. He sgain found himself smile at the sight of her heart shaped face, still so young, and her expressive straight eyebrows. Dark, her eyes impossible to read.
He looks old she thought. Hinged her leg over the brown leather arm of her chair. That drew an eye and she turned her head to smile at the oncoming plodding purple clouds. She would not share her little victories. He wasn't old though, not in the ways that mattered. Oh the grey had won the battle in his hair and beard, and there were laugh lines carved in to his face that had not once been there, or been there so well but in all the ways that she cared about he was as young as he had been all those years ago.
She heard it there, his youth, in the laugh that brought her back. When she asked what he was laughing at he responded with his all too boyish grin, 'You Bruja- it is always fun to watch you think.' She shot him her best scowl, which brought only another of those wonderful laughs.
It was as she wanted. Years ago infront of all those people she had told him, softly so that only he could hear -'They can all have the man you are, all I want for myself is the little boy you will always be.' He had promised her that. And kept it, and her, himself.
The song had changed. And drawn his eyes to the east. He was looking for a sun that could not be seen, she knew that. What quiet madness plagues him at this time of day? she thought, and thought she would never know.
She saw then a tear at his eye, which confused her. She asked what was wrong. 'This song makes me cry. Do you not remember where it is from?' She listened and could not place it, told him so. He told her from where it was and she then recognized. It was some song from a long ago TV show, one that had enthralled and haunted. Him in his youth, wide eyed and impressionable, and easily swept away by characters and stories and loss. He still was.
'Do you think it would have struck you without that show?' she inquired. He sighed, and held out his glass. Now just lonely cubes, waiting for the next inevitable deluge. She popped up and pulled it towards the bar behind them.
'You get old enough and there ceases to feel like there is a beginning and an end. It is all just one continiousness. It doesn't feel linear.' a pause. a sigh. 'I do not know what it did for me before, I do not know what it did for me after. There is no before and after anymore for me.'
He could feel one of those eye brows raise behind him. He could hear it in her voice when she asked 'what then is there if there is no before and after?'
There it was. Like the light that burns on the horizon after the sunset, in his voice. The little boy that would never grow, only one day die. The smile she wore was soft and sad after the words had set in.
'There's only now.' he had said.
She handed him his drink over his shoulder, leaned down to his ear. They looked out.
'No, there's not only now,' she said, he turned his head slightly to watch her as she looked into the silent raging, the divide between clouds and sea nearly indistinguisable, In the same soft voice he had heard so many years ago at that alter 'there is now' she said 'and there is always.'
He played music, thumbing through the collections until he found something to his taste, set it spinning under the needle. How many days have we spent like this? She thought pulling back her long unattended brown hair.
She longed for a pair of sweat pants, but knew she would not change from the loose fitting unpatterned dress, she had long given up. That habit, for his penchant for formal dress- He went only so far as to discard the tie and unbotton the top button of his vest, shoes scuffed still worn made sounds on the arachic themed tile floor.
Ice into glass, and then a drink to sip. On he he dangled his drink and reclined into his chair, facing their sea. She poured into the chair near his, cocked at an angle so that ever out of the corner of his eye he could see her. Disobedient hairs teased by the wind. He sgain found himself smile at the sight of her heart shaped face, still so young, and her expressive straight eyebrows. Dark, her eyes impossible to read.
He looks old she thought. Hinged her leg over the brown leather arm of her chair. That drew an eye and she turned her head to smile at the oncoming plodding purple clouds. She would not share her little victories. He wasn't old though, not in the ways that mattered. Oh the grey had won the battle in his hair and beard, and there were laugh lines carved in to his face that had not once been there, or been there so well but in all the ways that she cared about he was as young as he had been all those years ago.
She heard it there, his youth, in the laugh that brought her back. When she asked what he was laughing at he responded with his all too boyish grin, 'You Bruja- it is always fun to watch you think.' She shot him her best scowl, which brought only another of those wonderful laughs.
It was as she wanted. Years ago infront of all those people she had told him, softly so that only he could hear -'They can all have the man you are, all I want for myself is the little boy you will always be.' He had promised her that. And kept it, and her, himself.
The song had changed. And drawn his eyes to the east. He was looking for a sun that could not be seen, she knew that. What quiet madness plagues him at this time of day? she thought, and thought she would never know.
She saw then a tear at his eye, which confused her. She asked what was wrong. 'This song makes me cry. Do you not remember where it is from?' She listened and could not place it, told him so. He told her from where it was and she then recognized. It was some song from a long ago TV show, one that had enthralled and haunted. Him in his youth, wide eyed and impressionable, and easily swept away by characters and stories and loss. He still was.
'Do you think it would have struck you without that show?' she inquired. He sighed, and held out his glass. Now just lonely cubes, waiting for the next inevitable deluge. She popped up and pulled it towards the bar behind them.
'You get old enough and there ceases to feel like there is a beginning and an end. It is all just one continiousness. It doesn't feel linear.' a pause. a sigh. 'I do not know what it did for me before, I do not know what it did for me after. There is no before and after anymore for me.'
He could feel one of those eye brows raise behind him. He could hear it in her voice when she asked 'what then is there if there is no before and after?'
There it was. Like the light that burns on the horizon after the sunset, in his voice. The little boy that would never grow, only one day die. The smile she wore was soft and sad after the words had set in.
'There's only now.' he had said.
She handed him his drink over his shoulder, leaned down to his ear. They looked out.
'No, there's not only now,' she said, he turned his head slightly to watch her as she looked into the silent raging, the divide between clouds and sea nearly indistinguisable, In the same soft voice he had heard so many years ago at that alter 'there is now' she said 'and there is always.'
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
love in october
there was something, shimmering and fragile, at the horizon that caught his eye, he was facing west when heard her go down. he turned around, the friesian mare had gone to ground. constance must have felt the fore leg go, and tossed herself from the horse's back as the she, mayday, had pitched.
everything moved slow, mayday tossing her head, constance scrambling on her hands and knees, the odd falsetto golden bars of light falling at angle through the october cloud cover. he blinked hard, once- twice, he could hear the blood pulse in his ears drowning out the terrified mare's shrieks. then they stopped, constance's black hands holding mayday's head and neck down- she had named her years ago after a james bond heroine. the friesian was the only thing he had ever seen blacker than constance.
one hand over his mouth, the other, the left, at his neck. constance was whispering, he couldn't hear anything over the tidal roar of the crickets. she spoke to him. he heard only mayday's breaths, heavy and labored. she spoke to him. the grass had begun to yellow at the tips. she spoke to him. her eyes endlessly jett seem to plead, he couldn't tell if she was crying or sweating. she spoke to him- and he heard her -the second drawer in the barn-
he couldn't tell if her ran or walked, or if the hands of his that had taken to expressing his horror at his neck and lips had moved. he knew that he had to get what constance needed, to the barn, to the second drawer, back to that spot in the field.
it wasn't until he was back where he had begun, standing in the suggestive whisper of that western horizon that he felt the soapwood handle, smooth and worn. she spoke again, he stared at her. he looked to the east, the sliver of the inevitable on its horizon- the indifference of it's purple onset. she spoke again.
-i heard you- he said.
-then please- her again.
-don't you love her?-
-more than you could know - he was only thirteen. he looked at constance, her hair pulled back into a tight bun. mayday's mane fell loose at constance's knees. he didn't understand, the thing his hand felt like an anvil, his arm ached.
constance knelt to her ear. he heard her whisper to her in a voice so sweet he wasn't sure it came from her at all.- it's going to be okay my beautiful girl, my beautiful, beautiful girl-
constance touched the flat of mayday's snout, the stood. he raised his hand though he did not know how. he thought she would turn away, that she would drown herself in one of the horizons, but she did not. she stood there, arms limp at her side, her eyes flat as slate staring at mayday.
he realized that it was easier to remember a beautiful thing that had been lost than it was to live with a beautiful thing that had been hobbled.
and then it was so easy to pull that trigger and make her love just a memory.
Monday, February 18, 2013
On the Nobility of Masochism
a teacher walked through the forum, flanked as was usual by his two students, who walked side by side, though not together. the three of them passed through the decadent arches of those places they knew so well and spoke candidly about the sort of topics that interested them. they did this almost every day, passing through humanity, in it but not of it. the repetitive nature of their daily habits never dulled the novelty of their conversations that they pursued with poorly hid passion and who's value rarely was understandable to those people who happened,in passing, to catch the banter that passed through them. a stop as usual at the public fountain where the teacher would refil the bottle he kept at his hip, and his students would adjust themselves- the male ever dusting off his boots or adjusting his belt,the girl tightening the braids that pulled her hair tightly at her scalp, or pulling at the corset that held her figure underneath the dress her station required.
they moved into the loud temple district past the the drunken priests with their wine dyed hands and the virulent ashen faced doomsday criers. fools bought pigeons and cats for sacrifices, women with wild dyed hair pulled apart the intestines of goats scrying for futures. occasionally they would stop, listen, turn to each other- the teacher asking questions and each student attempting to explain their thoughts.
near the end of the district there was a solitary man who spoke to no one. he knelt facing a wall, many times covered with sacreligious and suggestive graffiti which he quite obviously was oblivious to. with his left hand he held himself off the ground, with his right he used a small hand made whip, shards of broken pottery woven into the lashes to flail his back. he cried out not at all, only the sounds of the gasping breath accompanied the end of each shuddering effort.
the teacher turned to his students and asked them what each of them thought of the spectacle. the boy's face twisted in disdain, spoke to his teacher saying, 'i am surprised any person would treat themselves in such a manner.' the teacher smiled dismissively, though the boy missed it, as did the girl for she could not take her eyes off the bleeding, bent man. not even turning back to her company she spoke, and the old teacher was sure, even though he had over heard her, that she had been speaking to herself, 'i did not know any Man could love himself so much.'
they moved into the loud temple district past the the drunken priests with their wine dyed hands and the virulent ashen faced doomsday criers. fools bought pigeons and cats for sacrifices, women with wild dyed hair pulled apart the intestines of goats scrying for futures. occasionally they would stop, listen, turn to each other- the teacher asking questions and each student attempting to explain their thoughts.
near the end of the district there was a solitary man who spoke to no one. he knelt facing a wall, many times covered with sacreligious and suggestive graffiti which he quite obviously was oblivious to. with his left hand he held himself off the ground, with his right he used a small hand made whip, shards of broken pottery woven into the lashes to flail his back. he cried out not at all, only the sounds of the gasping breath accompanied the end of each shuddering effort.
the teacher turned to his students and asked them what each of them thought of the spectacle. the boy's face twisted in disdain, spoke to his teacher saying, 'i am surprised any person would treat themselves in such a manner.' the teacher smiled dismissively, though the boy missed it, as did the girl for she could not take her eyes off the bleeding, bent man. not even turning back to her company she spoke, and the old teacher was sure, even though he had over heard her, that she had been speaking to herself, 'i did not know any Man could love himself so much.'
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Taunt
She looked up from the careless mountain range of pillows when he asked the question, unexpected. She wasn't sure how they had got onto this topic. The night had started with a blood trail of discarded clothes. Her neck hurt, turning to look at him, so she rolled over onto her back, the room was poorly lit so she didn't bother to cover up.
-Why did you ask me that?- her voice tumbled over the sheets and into the space between them. She uncoiled in the bed, her long limbs limbs pouring out of her comforter, she laid on the bed like it was a throne. He thought that in the dismissive charmed dark that hid the residue of the night's makeup and the pink spots of pressure his fingertips and lips would have made on her pale skin, she looked angelic.
-Because I wanted to know.- he answered. She didn't know how he did that just said or asked whatever he wanted so casually. The original question had jarred her Can you be trusted? She could hear him stretch, she didn't know when she had learned the sound of his skin being pulled taunt. She knew he wasn't angry or in a rush to receive her answer, he would wait minutes or weeks until she answered, or forever if she did not. He believed all anyone could do was ask the questions that were written on the walls of one's own heart. The answers were gifts.
-I don't know. What sort of trust are you talking about?- she said. He flicked on the light of the bathroom. He was backlit then, his form all dark and outlined. She thought it was the perfect image of him, summed him up, somehow managing to expose himself and still remain concealed.
He said her name. He didn't do that often. She propped herself onto elbows as he shook his head softly.
-There's only one kind of trust.-
And closed the door.
-Why did you ask me that?- her voice tumbled over the sheets and into the space between them. She uncoiled in the bed, her long limbs limbs pouring out of her comforter, she laid on the bed like it was a throne. He thought that in the dismissive charmed dark that hid the residue of the night's makeup and the pink spots of pressure his fingertips and lips would have made on her pale skin, she looked angelic.
-Because I wanted to know.- he answered. She didn't know how he did that just said or asked whatever he wanted so casually. The original question had jarred her Can you be trusted? She could hear him stretch, she didn't know when she had learned the sound of his skin being pulled taunt. She knew he wasn't angry or in a rush to receive her answer, he would wait minutes or weeks until she answered, or forever if she did not. He believed all anyone could do was ask the questions that were written on the walls of one's own heart. The answers were gifts.
-I don't know. What sort of trust are you talking about?- she said. He flicked on the light of the bathroom. He was backlit then, his form all dark and outlined. She thought it was the perfect image of him, summed him up, somehow managing to expose himself and still remain concealed.
He said her name. He didn't do that often. She propped herself onto elbows as he shook his head softly.
-There's only one kind of trust.-
And closed the door.
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