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He whispers “What if I’m far away. Will you still feel me?”
Picture this behind
closed eyes:
You are standing very still. Breathing slowly. You try to
listen to something, but there is no sound. There is no smell. You are standing
still, in a wooden house. Your skin feels nothing. What is nothing?
Breathing slowly.
You try to remember who you are, or what you’re doing
standing still in a wooden house. Nothing. No memory.
There is a sound.
Muffled voices. Strain your ears to listen to the whispers
between lovers. Your consciousness shifts into their conversation and you leave
your body to float within their essence. You realize that you only need to hold
breath to leave body.
“No sense of sound, light, speech. No information goes into
you through these senses. What do you do then?”
“Can I still feel?”
“Feel? How will you..”
“Through my skin?”
“Do you feel through your skin?”
“What do you mean? Of course I feel through my skin, when
someone touches me, I feel something. Or if I hold on to a burning matchstick
for too long because I’m stoned, I feel pain”
“So…you’ll be able to feel me even if you can’t see me or
hear me?”
“Only if you’re close to me”
He shuffles his feet
and looks down at the wooden floor, the sharp shadow created by the afternoon
sun of a dying winter day streaks over his shoes that have left footprints in
the dusty labyrinth that is this house.
He is resting against
the wall on his side, and she is in front of him with the window between them.
There is nothing you
can see outside the window apart from a glorious light that breaks through the
dusty glass.
There is an odd taste
in his mouth, reminding him of his grandfather.
He looks up at her and
sees her staring outside the window. White light shape her face and she looks
older than herself, like the moment before the white oleander touches the
ground after falling from a tree.
He whispers “What if I’m far away. Will you still feel me?”
“I’ll call you every day, and write you letters…”
He moves his face close to hers and kisses
her on the mouth. She closes her eyes.
The knife cuts open
into her stomach and enters her skin, pushing a gasp out of her mouth. He moves
in swiftly and holds her hips, pulling her closer to himself with his mouth on
hers. She feels the pain rise up her spine and he bites her lip. This pleasure
and pain combined transcends her consciousness into understanding that her body
is capable of two extreme sensations at the same time.
With the knife lodged
in her stomach he puts a hand on her vagina, slowly rubbing her while she
bleeds .
Her body lies in a
fetal position on the floor. Red stains the dust on the wood and he sits next
to her, staring out the window. White light blinding his face. He can breathe
now. He is no one anymore, nothing. His fingers interwined in her dead bones. A
moth sits on his hand.
It could have chosen
to sit anywhere else in the whole room.
You only chose to sit
close to him.
Like a ghost.