Layers of Her Dialogue
She feels with her hands that her heart is made of stone…
"Will you go back?" and it's a question she was sure he would never ask.
"Yes." She says because it's too late for lies now, or perhaps, she thinks, it's too early.
"When?" he asks, but she thinks he must already know the answer.
"When its over" and your dead she wants to say, but she doesn't because he already knows that and she thinks if she just doesn't say it out loud he will live a little longer.
"It may never end" he says and she wonders, again, where he finds the strength to hope.
"It will" she says and when his eyes trail sadly over her face she wonders where he finds the strength to still believe. And when he closes his eyes and bows his head and turns into himself searching for that strength she wonders why he still does it.
Because it takes hours and minutes and seconds to search for that and there's too much blood to believe that it actually works.
And she hates his blind faith because he holds onto to it so fiercely that she thinks it's all he can ever feel anymore. And she hates that because it isn't working because he is still dying every day.
Because she watches him pray knees bent and hands clasped and eyes closed and she thinks it's all so useless because if he just opened his eyes and stood up straight he would see that there was nothing there but stale air and lost words and he would realize that he could stand on his own without believing in something that won't save him anyways.
She thinks there should be more to his life than living for the memory of something that died when miracles still existed.
Because miracles are all fiction and fable and life is real and death is real and there is no escaping that.
"How do you know?" and for a minute she thinks he's asking how she knows about death and she briefly contemplates telling him that in future everyone knows they are going to die. But she doesn't.
"Because I don't belong here" but sometimes I think I do she wants to say, but she doesn't because she thinks it will be easier for him to think he never had a choice.
"Do you hate the past so much?" he asks and she wonders if he really means something else.
"No." and that was the problem.
"No?" and it's less a question than it is a statement of curiosity.
"I hate the future." And it is the first thing she has said to him that she has truly truly meant.
"Why?" and she's not sure why he wants to know.
"Because it's where I am supposed to belong" and it means you really are dead is what she doesn't say because he doesn't need to know that she has always known that he was going to die.
"I understand" and she laughs because he understands so much. Except maybe this.
"No you don't" and he really really doesn't because all he wants is to live here in this place where he belongs. And all she wants is to be with him here where she doesn't belong.
"You're right, I don't" and he's angry and she feels so small for enjoying the fact that she can make him feel something. Because sometimes she thinks he is just using her to forget everything else and sometimes she thinks that she is just using him to feel like she is wanted.
Because he's said "hi" and "good morning" and "please" and "thank you" and "harder" and "now" but he's never said "you're beautiful".
And she wants a man to tell her she's beautiful because then she would know that he wants her and that at least she knows.
She's not sure she knows what its like to love so she thinks it's unfair to want a man to love her. She thinks if she expects the things she knows it will at least give her something real she can hold onto.
Because she needs something and she's never had him.
"It doesn't matter though" she says more to herself than to him. Because it really doesn't. She's just a girl lost in a foreign place and time. She can't change anything. And she tells him "I have to go back."
"Yes you do" he says and she wants to cry because she would stay if he would just ask. But his eyes are closed and he's blind again and she's suddenly angry.
"It won't ever work you know" she says through gritted teeth and five hundred years of knowing. And she instantly wishes it was the one thing she hadn't said.
"I know" and his eyes are still closed and his hands are still clasped and she still doesn't get it.
"Then why…" she trails off because she's afraid she will keep hurting him with her words.
"Because I want the lie" and this time his eyes are open and all shimmering and poignant and cliché and she thinks it would be so funny if it didn't hurt so much.