Wednesday 8 June 2016

Between Them Two

She'd been grounding herself, he noticed.

Slowly adding pieces to her skin. First it was a ring, then there was an earring.  One day he woke up and noticed.  The pieces were there to stay.  They'd taken up permanent residence and were never removed.  They were like her skeleton moving without, like it wasn't just the soft inner organs that needed protection any more.

She was electricity.

The very important parts aren't skin and bones, not muscles or fats, nor any of the liquids.  All of those things are disposable; destructible. The really important part is energy, is essence and that is what she'd been grounding.

He'd been watching her, she noticed.

His eyes would follow her moves but not like a casual viewer.  Like a scientist with an experiment.  He'd been watching as though each  action was fascinating, or telling.  When she caught his eyes he'd smile and look away.  As though he'd done nothing that would require an explanation.

He was comfortable.

He was stretching; his limbs were no more contained to polite spaces, his opinions were given freely with no need for solicitation.  His expressions became true and honest, angry and sad, and perplexed, and fearful, and apathetic.  They were all there to be seen clear as midday.

She was as a tree sending roots of twisted metal deep into the Earth.  She was insulating and, months after he noticed, he shared his finding with her.  Her response was that he was shading.  Like a child filling in shapes or an artist highlighting the lack of light or a tree extending leafy branches.  They agreed to disagree with each others summation.  They both thought the other spoke truth.

Photo courtesy of Cosmopolitan

Though...

More true was that she felt fragile, thin, and weightless.  As though the metaphysical things about her needed to be made real.  And until such moment the bits of metal would keep her around.

More true was that in her he found answers.  The questions he'd been mulling over all his life were no more.  The lost time and all that had escaped his wisdom was right there between them two.