How We Fold
abstraction
(I own nothing but the words)
--
The sun beats down hot and heavy like molasses, a stickiness clinging to her restless limbs as she stares straight into the sky. Three stars are blinding white even in the early hours of afternoon and she squints a little, hand curving against her hip like some kind of question, and she can feel small beads of sweat start to roll slowly, slowly, down the soft angle of her jaw. The weather today is sunny, with a fifty percent chance of trouble.
A sigh hits her neck and the breath seeps through her shining hair, a golden-white cascading in a careful curve down her neck because of the sun's reflection. She doesn't turn, just shifts her free hand behind her and waits for its partner. Their fingers lock easily. "We're in trouble, aren't we," she manages through the heat, more of a statement than anything else. There's a pause. "Well," he begins, but he is cut off by a shout in the distance and they are already sprinting, dust kicking up behind their heels and catching the light like diamonds. They don't turn to see it.
They never do.
--
There is glass everywhere. Towers spiral upwards with ease from an enormous, empty dome, but standing next to it a reflection of herself stretches for miles and miles, the same copy of her image a million times over, and she just brushes her fingertips against the surface. It is cool and smooth under her hand and she pushes her palm gently against the giant structure, the heat of it leaving a fog inside the glass. The weather today is partly cloudy, with uncertainties forming easily due to a westward wind.
It shouldn't bother her, she thinks, not anymore. Staring through the dome at an angle, she tries to imagine that the endless echoes of her image are just pieces of herself that she has yet to find; decisions she has made, or will have to make, focusing into one copy like a reverse prism. She knows that if she moves to face the building head on, all her reflections will slide into just the one, the only echo left the shaking frame of a person who she doesn't recognize quite yet.
A voice calls softly from far ahead of her, and she watches his reflections walk closer and closer, the sway of his coat the same for each step in each echo. She wonders if he has found all his pieces yet, and her breath leaves a heart of heat to be soaked up by the dome as each of his reflections meet with each of hers. She turns to face him, and smiles with an unusual reserve. "Ready?" he says, but he doesn't wait for answer. Maybe she doesn't have one.
They are a footstep away from walking inside their home, the atmosphere warm and familiar compared to the abandoned glass city behind her, when she finally replies. "Ready."
--
"I was almost happy," she says one day, cleaning her dishes calmly, apropos of absolutely nothing. An impossible window shines pale light across her shoulders in a shifting pattern, but she feels no warmth. The weather today is unexpectedly honest, with a tide of silence forecasted for the early evening. He is leaning carefully against a counter, arms folded casually across his chest, and she is just drying her teacup with a soft thoughtfulness across her features. A few moments pass and she places her cup with a muffled clink next to his, but somehow the sound rings in her ears. When she looks, he is only staring at her, quietly and intensely in the way of his she is almost used to, and she remembers the way that this same man with this same gaze made her feel before their division. It tingles in her still, but she no longer feels like she is being categorized into something she is not – he is merely seeing her for what she is.
Another moment passes like liquid and she is returning his silent stare before he wraps her up in his arms. "I suppose it doesn't matter too much anymore," she says quietly into his chest. He holds her with care, his cheek smooth against hers, and she finds that she doesn't need to hear anything in return, so nothing passes from his lips.
They stay like this for a long while. She watches the light dim into an even darkness before they are ready to part from one another.
--
There is something wrong with her, something wrong with her insides as she stumbles, falls, remains. The weather today is red, with pain making an appearance before black. She succumbs.
He is cursing quickly under his breath, and she knows this only because she does not understand a word that he is saying. His hands are slowly mapping her body with a fragility which she does not understand until she looks down. There is only red. And then there is black.
She wakes, again, to a persistent beeping which her body throbs in time with, but she cannot feel anything. It is as though she is wrapped in cotton wool, a haze of warm nothingness infusing her limbs, and her eyelashes arc upwards as light appears between her eyelids. He is quiet, staring. "Hello," she tries to say, but her throat is dry and her voice not even a whisper. His hand hesitantly brushes hair from her face and remains there, against her cheek, a weight pressing against the gauzy barrier of nothing. She can almost smile, so she does so.
I'll be okay, she thinks to him.
He says nothing.
--
He is walking through a land with singing trees, their leaves falling in intricate patterns with mingling sighs like chimes, light and airy, and he wonders how he can forget about these places that he was going to show her.
The weather today is still, with increasing chances of painful reminiscing.
His sigh is unheard through the high chords of the leaves, the echoing chorus of the branches, ever swaying.
He stays until the afternoon fades into twilight, and the sun no longer shines golden through the trees.
He leaves as he arrived. Alone.