Monday, June 28, 2004
love is not a victory march
4th post of the day, can you tell I haven't had much work to do today? Both the other people who are in this main room with me are out for the next few days, and they're the ones who give me things to do... I wasn't expecting to finish this project Friday afternoon, receiving the e-mail this morning from my programmer saying that we're finished. I don't start my next project until Wednesday, I think, so it's a whole lot of nothin' until then. I finished my story and read a whole lot today, so I guess that makes up for... time. Also in the thinking stages of a new mix. Woo!
Finished story:
Summer doesn’t stop anything. Temperatures may rise, but all that really does in the end is add a certain disdained mugginess to the air. Still things don’t get discussed, get done, although time doesn’t take her stress level and memory into account as it just keeps moving. She’ll blink and wistfully wish for it to slow down, wait for her, but such is useless at times like this. Time has plugged its ears and knows that if it gets tired of moving moving moving, the stars will fall away and this inescapable sky and earth will tear and contort into one and the same, bringing everything along with it. Longing and rage, along with wide eyes and soft skin, will fold together until none of it is distinguishable, not like there will be anything to distinguish it besides Time standing still and watching.
She knows this, and contends that all she has left to do is catch herself up with whatever she can. If she starts going along with these motions, she will be hiding away everything locked inside herself, pushing against her skin from the inside and doing its best to escape. She understands the consequence of its success then would be infinitely worse than now, so she swallows hard and prepares to get it over with.
She sees him stare blankly, not blinking, chin tilted slighting up so she cannot quite tell what he’s focusing on, even though it is obvious that he is incapable of seeing anything at the moment. Her legs, instinctively, move one in front of the other, carrying her to him, despite her brain doing its best to shout Stop! It’s not too late to turn around!, although in vain. All those electrical impulses traveling from nerve end to nerve end will never come to realize their trip and efforts were fruitless and won’t be listened to. They use their entire existence to deliver their message but she keeps moving forward, slowly, until she stops and is close enough to extend her wary arm and have her trembling fingertips brush against his graceful ones resting on those chains; metal intertwined with itself time and time again to reach infinity, to support him while he doesn’t even notice her standing right behind him. Her breath will make his hair dance, taunting her invisibility. It is still not too late to turn around, her brain shouts, but she is immobile, paralyzed. His skin is so translucent that she is sure that if she stepped any closer and tried to embrace him, she would be engulfed and live out her days lodged between the valves of his heart and taking her vacations far away in his smile, the places she used to believe she belongs.
Watching him be so lost, four thousand miles but eighteen inches away from her, is too overwhelming for her to handle and she expends every ounce of strength she has to open her mouth and breathe his name, then feels her lungs tighten again as the breath wafts through still air and finds its new home in his ear. His thoughts rush themselves back through miles and years of travel and his eyes lose their gloss, gain a layer of cloudiness proving that he is once again here.
It seems like four hundred years pass before he has completely turned around to face her. Instantaneously, her body revolts. It is scared, doesn’t know what he’s going to tell her, so the terror starts in her waiting ears and travels next to her brain, which sends it everywhere else complete with Prepare for the worst! battle cry. Its closest neighbor starts first, developing complete oceans behind her eyes waiting to explode all over her face, do its best to drown her from within. Little does it know the impossibility, and no one will give it a hint in fear of ruining a dream. As these tremendous bodies of water plane her demise, somewhere infinitely far away but in the same body bones and support systems are beginning to fail. Before she can think of a way to stop it, her joints fill up with the same ocean that is behind her eyes, but oceans are not made to sustain weight on its surface and she is sure she will fall. The sky, at least to her weary eyes, gets darker and his cloudy eyes and translucent skin get hazy around the edges as if drawn in crayon instead of actually existing. There are tiny air holes in the outlines of the sides of his face and they get harder to concentrate on. Her brain screams again You cannot drown if the water is internal!, but once again she cannot hear and starts to sink, drowning in her last deep breath.
Her eyes open again, using all of her strength to push the matter of her eyelids away from each other to let in light and image. He is breathing heavily, having just lifted her into the rubber sling created for support next to his. His cloudy eyes search hers for life and consciousness, and she can do nothing besides gaze back at him letting her eyes do all the talking. If eyes really are the window to the soul, then she tries to make hers wall-to-wall glass, pushing everything she has into view so he won’t be confused and she doesn’t have to speak a word. The little worker is as exhausted as she from moving everything closer and closer to him, and both of them watch him intently for any sign that shows he is receiving something, that he understands.
He smiles, slowly and sadly, and she understands his response. It is better than what she feared, but still nowhere near her dreams. She closes her eyes again to keep the oceans internal, and leans her tired head forward against the chains that hold her off the ground. She is, in her entirety, too tired to move, but she knows this is over. Her brain and heart combine to try to convince her to gather herself enough to escape, get away before he can see her vulnerability, even though both are sure it has already happened. She can feel, on the top of her head, the tears of a deity crying from whatever heaven may be up there, or maybe just innumerable molecules of water that the clouds have also become too tired to hold and decided to let go, her eyelids doing the same. Along with all the water bombarding her from all sides, she feels his long, graceful fingers intertwine with her hair, and in that gesture she knows it is too much.
Her energy recovered in the need to get away, she stands with now wet sand clinging to her bare feet, rushing towards home. Her legs carry her much faster this time, screaming at her to leave before anything else can happen to make this harder on her skin which tries its hardest to keep everything in one piece. She is almost there, the door just a mere ten seconds and a few more feet away.
‘Wait.’ She hears behind her. She is almost there, but cannot resist his plea. Her feet stop moving, but she keeps whatever strength she has to not give in completely; does not turn around.
‘I’m melting.’ She lets her silence give him his answer, and forces her eyes straight ahead, concentrating on the integral patterns woven into the brick. It is layer upon layer of dark burgundy stone bulging out towards her, beckoning to be leaned on, touched, stared at. It’ll say to her that it has seen thousands of stories end like this and that, in time, things will be better. She tries her hardest to believe it, to put her faith in the rock that has had no choice but to witness the rise and fall of everyone that stands by it, but it is beyond her. She can only close her eyes and focus so intently on thought that the ideas must flee out to him. She closes her eyes, hangs her head softly, whispers a muffled goodbye, and steps inside. Just before the door closes, she has one last moment of wild need for him, for his acceptance of her and her choices, and turns around to see if he looks sorrowful at her departure. Her searching eyes will look for longing on his face, but he exists now only as a puddle on her front step.
4:21 PM
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