the things you say part 7

the things you say   part 7

Some weeks have gone by. There has been silence. No sound in this small world of you and I. I have lain head upon the grey white of this unwashed pillow and considered the uneven surface of the flat white ceiling. I have located its flaws. They are many.
 

It has been monumental, that task, lifting my head. I strain my ears until they want to bleed in the listening for a whisper a movement from you. There is nothing. Just the stillness of air unruffled by hope or possibility.  Just the bland scent of nothing but tedium, the inner walls of standard cardboard boxes, the hard to fathom colour, the jolt of disappointment, empty, uniform, recognised nothingness. Not even a twinge of leaf mould to make the heart move faster, no concrete, no acrid heat on dirt. No scent of rat. 

This then is where I find myself. Lying in a pit. Mattress shaped below me. Pillow damp with the uncontained dribble, spilling from the corner of this hanging mouth, slipping, sliding slowly across my cheek to pool on the cotton beneath me, to moisten then dry, moisten then dry, layers upon layers.  I am looking, eyes open, but the looking is inward. What is this? What is it? I have heard the things you say. I know them. I hear them, I read them. I am quieted by the tangible mutual desire we feel when nearby. i sense you as you sense me. We talk across crowds with words said to all and speak to each other. We do. I do not think it. I know it. In our presence the world becomes clearer. There is hysteria. There is laughter. There is intimacy.  A blurt of telling, a burst of excitement, stilted in shyness, in distance, in recognising and maintaining the required space between us. It ends too soon. And when there is no formal reason to come together we are held, like this, apart. There can be no step forward, not from you. You are not allowed to say, cannot say, there, under such scrutiny. I can, I can say for I am freer, but I, i am afraid. The fear of this, my imagination. 

 

In this place, this state, this pit, where I know all the things no one wants to, I catch a gust of you. A net cast wide, my net cast so wide, happy to snare an imagining. Come and find me, you say. Come and look. I am not even sure if the words are yours, are meant for me. They are so wrapped in formality. But it becomes enough to bring me back to the world of chance, of hope, of some small offering of possibility. I know the distance is vast, untraveled, uneven. I will take hold of your words and make them mine, stitch them into my hem, hidden in weight and fabric. I will keep extending this hand and soon I think you may see it, hope you may catch hold of a fingertip, a palm, a wrist and know that it is solid.