If we stay, we settle, and what happens then. Do we implode. I hope we slide away from ourselves, piece by metal piece, bolts unscrewing and then allowing us to fall apart.
Sorry for this. I really wish I had more time to type this down. If I had more time, it would be prettier. It really would. But editing isn't a luxury I can afford right now so just, bear with me. Just get me through this month and I'll be editing more and posting less. Huzzah.
She listened to the way he rolled names off his tongue, how he spoke them so fondly. He held them so precious and close and she could tell, in his l's and his s's, that she wished he could hold the people they misrepresented.
Aching, is what ensued. A long bout of horrible trembles and can't-i-just-leave and someone-else-anyone-else. The answer was always no. The answer was always him.
He was around a lot, so it was; but his mind was always Elsewhere and he liked it there. Things were prettier in Elsewhere and he often forgot that where he was was Here. And the people of Here missed him.
Between them, she believed, was something that transcended what either of them could understand -- it was easier to say this than to acknowledge that bravery was hard to come by and courage was a characteristic she couldn't find.
He crawled into his own ideas and she would watch as he lost himself in the multiverse of his mind. He wandered freely in the echoes and ripples of thought and she would listen, listen to him talk, awe-inspired and breathless, about all the things he wished he could see.
And she would think, hope, that one day, one of those things would be her.
*
They say that touching is a form of understanding. Grasp. And how I wish I could understand you.
*
She woke up one morning finding that she had died. Well, she was missing an arm. She couldn't see. One of her knees was a little tricky and her hips were aching. Inside, a couple of guts had gone away too. It began then, the falling away. The falling apart.
Crawling toward him one morning, an arm. Reaching but never quite making it to him. On the pillow next to him, a pair of eyes, familiar enough but not quite to the point of identification. To watch him and to try to understand. He couldn't explain it but felt whole, all of a sudden. He wanted to say thank you but he couldn't talk. He had lost his voice.
In her head, it rang. Sweet and clear and constant, like a lullaby or a wedding song. If it was, in fact, death. She decided it wasn't so different.
day 9: move
