There, in the dark, they talk.
They are like the ocean and the seashell, their whispers filling the space of the room, catching the scant refractions of lost light. In their whisperings they agree and disagree, having lived two completely separate lives to this point, their perspectives are just a hair from parallel. She can see what he sees and yet cannot see it quite the same. Yet there is something in the narrative, there, in the dark, after the projection of it, that pulls them both but not quite the way they are pulled toward each other. [The gravity; her gravity]
He reaches for that tiny instrument and with the depression of a button, the scant light that loses itself in the spaces of the room is extinguished. It is all touch, and yet it is so much more resonant than if pupils could dilate to the extent they would need to discern shapes and features in the light’s absence. With the gravity of celestial bodies, they are pulled toward each other. There is the mixing of emotion and pulsing of desire and need, of healing and transcending. The echoes of myriad creation myths reverberate across myriad synapses and they attempt to rejoin what was split if there is truth to any.
They trace the outlines of their forms, of form, and exist within the boundaries created of their touch. It is like a world has opened up to them amidst all the worlds that exist around them which encapsulate the many lifetimes they have experienced to this point. A world where things are as they should’ve always been, at least, it feels that way to them both. Here, everything else ceases to distract and they can explore their curiosities and indulge in those lengthy conversations which they engage through words, touch, and the suspirations that follow, as the beads of sweat dry by the night’s breeze.
It is morning. The spell is broken, that incantation that comes of the whispers that spill in the space between each kiss. The bed is empty. It feels empty, even as he rests there and reaches out breathing in deeply, searching for the remnants of her scent, pulling close the pillow on which it still lingers. It might have been different, were it not for their labyrinthine paths to this present moment. But here, now, there is that weight of all those things that could have been, of the paths they could have taken together, of the moments that could’ve constructed their trajectory to the moments they share. The bed might not be empty, feel empty, as he lies there, feeling that weight of absence which balances out the bit of presence that they steal away from the lives they’ve lived until now.
The intricate constructions of decision, each building further onto each other, curving the path just slightly so that over the years all those wonderful possibilities lay just out of reach and some that were never imagined find themselves within grasp. But this, this space, this possibility seems like something that was always there, beckoning in the hushed tones of hearts pulsating. An unearthed truth, perhaps, found too late to be the only one.
And she weaves her way back. Through the still dark streets, the headlights cutting paths through shadows, the cold biting into her, time refusing to still itself or slow. She rushes away as if, were she to be gone for too long, all worlds would rupture. She quiets all thoughts, organizes the memories of the moments they shared and puts them away behind the worries of a different life as she speeds from one world to the other. As the house still creaks in the shifting light of morning and the temperature rises, she steps back into her space, her place, in the world she’s spent her lifetime creating through decision and indecision. Like paper, she slips back into her outline cut out as if she never left.