Slight slash here, if you squint.
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Connections
He knows.
On the nights I can't sleep, he is there in the kitchen. Nightmares are common in this decrepit house.
No words are exchanged as he passes me a cup of tea, made the way I like it – three sugars and no milk.
He knows.
His stare reveals everything. While I have only a vague idea of what keeps him awake, it is clear to him why I am not in bed.
I talk in my sleep, and he listens to my distressed ramblings.
He knows.
Almost thirty years of worrying over one man – how could it not affect me in these dark hours, when secrets are revealed, not because you can see them, but because you can't.
He has never asked me any questions, and I doubt he needs to.
There is a silent agreement between us: we both miss the same person, but feel different guilt, dream different dreams, and so together we choose to disturb no ghosts.
We each have different reasons, however. I want to break the pact, but I am reluctant to be the first. I should ask my questions; get my answers that seem so futile anyway. And yet I cannot bring myself to do this, because he will speak no words that have any meaning left in them. Not to me.
He knows.
He doesn't see the point in asking questions that he already knows the answer to. Frankly, neither do I.
Although, I wish he would, because while his questions would be about an old man's love and trust and betrayal and hate, all delicate but unimportant subjects, mine would be about war and dark and fighting and tears.
Our positions are oddly reversed. He is the one who knows what is important, and I am the one struggling to ask for an explanation. I know nothing but my juvenile dreams of the past.
He knows.
It frightens me, how much I have let things go, so that he is the one with all the power, and I, twenty years older, am waiting for his permission toask the vital questions.
And then I remember that, while he may hold a power far greater than mine, it is not in relations with me that he uses it, nor does he care to. Malicious does nothing to describe this child, seventeen and yet still a baby.
So I ask him my questions, and he asks his, and we both answer.
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