There’s a force between them, a push that moves him outside and her within. It’s in the way she teaches him to remember – how he shows her to forget.
His eyes are grey and indigo – the way a storm’s sky might appear swallowed by shallow salt water; blue the way she was the first day he first appeared. Two shades like her affection for life; fading pink on the surface – scarlet in the place that only he can see.
And it’s only getting deeper…
She walks the same path cut by clipper hands, a decrescendo of desire to see the light of day. The benefit of a muted existence is the thundering interruption a whisper brings when blown from the lips you long for. A simple… high…
His lips are slightly parted, like there’s something that he wants to say. She has the dimensions memorized. Height, width, thickness.
She dreamt of them last night…
He tells people he doesn’t know where she is while he’s watching the clock for her to drift by. She passes in and out of his wishes quarter past every hour, and most fluorescent sunsets. Each second’s clench of his hidden heart is hard enough to sustain his belief in her.
She’s crying in the dark. A soft whimper to declare she hasn’t forgotten the shape of his shoulders, the sound of his footsteps.
I need you to ask…
People think things matter, jewellery and bills – claims and names. She’s praying for shattered resistance. He yearns for a ‘yes…’
Beyond stakes they’re awake. Her sandalwood scent remains on the collar of his white shirt from the one day she leaned in just… close…
Enough.
Close enough for him to accept no other possibility. Faith finds ways through every crack. And even though she can’t afford to give anything away, she treasures being owned.
… you can’t measure that.